Adaptive Reuse- Starland Dairy project

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The Volta Collaborative- Adaptive Reuse
STARLAND DAIRY

Covered with a historical skin of the old building from the previous century, the new renovated Starland Dairy is designed to serve the community of the area to help build up better living standard and society inside the city of Savannah. Respect of history, concern of modernism and nature are the three main focuses of this design to create a well- functioning public building. Setting back away from the old east facade, the building contains two small garden with green spaces as a respect as well as a transition of space, between history and present, outside and inside impact. The tower, a tall and bright feature of the building is the only portion hat continue the wall of the old facade, standing proudly to appeal pedestrian of the commercial Bull Street. This tower contributed to the building as a brain running a body, from first floor as a public space to invite visitors, to second floor as a semi public for conference and discussion, to third floor as a private discussion and brainstorming of the company. Public spaces in the building, on the other hand, are open and have no walls to separate any places. The design intention is to create a free open space to make all users find their ways of working and collaborating, enhancing themselves to communicate and explore the building them. My idea is to give the building a chance to communicate with its users, and give the users themselves to understand where they are. A public building, especially collaborative one, should have open space for activities and communications and we shouldn’t constrain those activities into small rooms surrounded by walls. That is the idea of modernism in this design.

Human behaviours are different and there is only one way, as I believe, to connect them, is the nature. So I decided to bring nature from inside to outside and outside to inside, using the creativity of light and green spaces to connect people together. Transparency through glasses and view of the city from the building are what I focuses to bring nature in and out. Through the open area of the collaborative space, shadows casted by the old facade of the Dairy, or by the green tree played a role in evoking the nature inside the building. After all of that approaches, the new Starland Dairy building can be considered an excellent place for the community to come and visit, not only to collaboratively work or study, but also to relax and to find their own self in the realm of the past, the present and nature. I decided to break down any barriers that prevent the users to discover the interesting phenomenon inside this new building. In this building, there shouldn’t be any barriers, there shouldn’t be any boundaries. Everything should be flowing, soft, and blurring, under the hard and rough skin of the facade. Yes, under that shelter, a better world is happen