Design: Hengmo Hu
Collaborator: Joseph Ongaco, Lucy Wang, Zhiyan Xu
2021.7

The project is interested in establishing a center for women’s rights through an architecture that is made using replicable and sustainable construction methods, serving as both a flexible workspace for addressing gender inequity and a building precedent for locals to replicate in the further development of their communities.

In plan, the building is a series of nested gabled “houses,” creating a house-in-a-house form. The shaded spaces inside are split along radial lines, encouraging circulation towards the center. At the center of the building, the inner “house” is revealed with an atrium providing light to the sheltered spaces. This atrium is off-center to create different sized spaces: a large collective space, a medium-sized dialogue space, and a small administrative space. The walls are offset from the colonnade perimeter, providing a shaded walkway around the structure.


The pentagonal roof consists of corrugated metal roof plates which are held up by a system of beams and a series of columns that define the outer perimeter of the overall building while allowing the roof structure to “float” above the walls.  The roof panels are oriented with a slope that is higher at the perimeter and tapers down toward the central atrium, creating a “funnel” with the potential to collect rainwater via gutters at the central drip edge.

Under the roof, the earthen brick walls of the interior spaces form flexible organizations of space that splay outward towards important landmarks to call attention to the activities held inside. The collective space opens up towards the nearby road and river, the dialogue-based space faces in the direction of city hall and the local school, the administrative space is pointed in the direction of local homes, and the public non-enclosed spaces face the town center.