Archive 2020

Runwen Du
China

Otopia - Anti Social Housing

Dissertation title
Design for dignity: Study on the indoor living space of paralyzed people

Otupia Anti-Social Housing

I designed this apartment for Otaku (a group of young, unsociable people with some special interests, but who have a very dynamic online life). I have designed aspects to meet their basic survival needs but also to help them enjoy, cultivate and celebrate their special interests within their living space.

The starting point comes from me and my friends wish to live together in the future. We like the opaque and inclusive characteristics of virtual life, which makes me want to design such an apartment system.

By researching living apartments and 5 Otaku groups’ daily life, I realised that an Otaku living block would need to be very different to address their core needs, there are 5 main design features:

1. Precious space - the hobby space is the core of each single unit, surrounded by living function spaces, the unnecessary function areas are adjusted or deleted according to the specific needs of the Otaku.
2. Communal space - the semi-open space between the core elevator area and the residential area. Using aisles to break the door-facing-door form of ordinary apartments to increase the privacy of their living space.
3. No contact delivery system - cargo elevators installed so Otaku can order their daily essentials online to be delivered directly to the door without physical contact with strangers.
4. The Augmented Reality exterior - people can scan the building using their device, and they can see the different visual appearances.
5. To eliminate Otaku social panic - Glitch bar is a communication space,using partition walls to keep appropriate social distances with strangers.

Rather than designing a single living box, I wanted to design the whole anti-social infrastructure. This apartment block is to protect and celebrate these socially marginalized people.


Keywords: Apartment,Otaku,Social distances, Residential,
Mediums: animation,drawing,photograph, text, augmented reality, rendering
Download:
Runwen_DU.pdf

Insta: runwen_du
Website: https://www.behance.net/runwen_du/projects

Runwen Du portrait Runwen Du work image