The alley is a community disability-friendly space commissioned by Chengdu Yulin East Road Community and Wuhou District Disabled Persons’ Federation to plan, design, and operate. The alley hopes to create a space of freedom and equality. It calls on people with disabilities to get out of the house more and expand their living circles; it also hopes to become a window for communication and incubation, attracting more people to initiate and participate in open exploration attempts. I hope everyone can enjoy more than just what they need in the alley. Everyone has a good life.

In the early stage of the project, a team of Yijie conducted five months of visits with community staff to gain an in-depth understanding of the basic situation, daily behaviors and living habits of people with disabilities in the community. The survey results show that the disabled people in Yudong community are mainly those with hearing impairment and emotional disorders. Many of them avoid community activities, mainly because of “nothing to do”, “no acquaintances” and “lack of safety and the unknown”. This provides extremely important reference value for the design of the alley.

Accordingly, the alley adopts an uneven plane layout. There are almost no visual blind spots inside the space, and a moderate sense of security and distance lingers in the bustle. The facade treatment that creates a relationship between indoors and outdoors, the exterior seating design, and the interest generated by the retained trees allow strangers to communicate easily.

In order to meet the needs of different groups of people and achieve the true purpose of “openness and freedom”, a variety of spaces including outdoor activity space, gray space and indoor activity space are designed in the alley. Inspired by the Japanese “edge side” and the Chinese “beautiful back”, part of the ground in the outdoor space is raised to form seats, forming a new enclosed and open space.

A membrane structure is used at the top of the space. Its light transmittance can softly introduce natural light during the day. The breeze blows in the afternoon and casts mottled tree shadows. At night, it also reveals hazy light shadows. Like the light emitted by fireflies, even if it is a little faint, it hopes to give people warmth. The characteristics of the membrane structure forming a spatial shape through tension and stretching are exactly the softness and rigidity that we hope to express.

Since its opening, the alley has united communities, NPO organizations, commercial brands and other social forces to enter it. On the one hand, business pop-up activities and public welfare activities with different themes are held every month to provide community residents with a rich life experience. On the other hand, aunties from the community will be recruited as staff to build a set of business models and products with local community attributes, laying the foundation for subsequent entrepreneurship by community residents and people with disabilities.

Through the integrated execution of planning, design, and operation, Alley aims to create a space that supports people with disabilities to start businesses and participate in activities, hoping to have a positive social impact on the local community. The ingenious relationship between the intimate alley space where the alley is located and its indoor and outdoor spaces creates “just the right distance”, giving people with disabilities more opportunities to enter people’s sight, and at the same time making their presence a natural one. scenery, rather than being overemphasized.

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