Warenhuis Revitalization Project // Medan Creative School

University of Sumatera Utara

Project idea

Kesawan is the name of an area in West Medan District, Medan, Indonesia. This area is filled with historic buildings of cultural heritage, but fortunately it experienced an architectural demolition and reached a point of concern.

Medan Warenhuis is one of the historic building in Kesawan area that began to be abandoned and not maintained, it's necessary to take action and revitalize the area to support historic district development and the further heritage awareness of city.

Alongside, the millennial generation is facing challenges in the workplace unlike generations before. One of many difficulties millennials face when entering the workforce is the constant changes in recruiting technology.

The creative industries have been seen to become increasingly important to economic well-being, proponents suggesting that "human creativity is the ultimate economic resource" (Florida 2002, p. xiii), and that "the industries of the twenty-first century will depend increasingly on the generation of knowledge through creativity and innovation" (Landry & Bianchini 1995, p. 4).

The aim of the school itself is to help millennial generation who want to learn and entrepreneurship in the creative industries, so they can create jobs and develop businesses. Based on data from the Indonesian Ministry of Industry, fashion and craft are the dominant subsectors in making economic contributions. These two types of industries become locomotives in the development of Indonesia's national creative Industry. The media subsector can also be a companion for fashion and craft.

Project description

The existing building is located in Kesawan Square, with site approximately 8500 sqm area.

By using the theory of adaptive re-use which is a design theory in conservation area, a mass of new buildings is added and connected to the existing building. There's a change in the new function of the entire building complex, from its old function as a Supermarket to a Creative Hub for Medan Citizen.

The mass of the existing building turned into a multi-mass building complex that carries out various functions within it. To connect the entire building area, there's a skywalk between buildings. For outdoor spaces, there's a plaza area that functions as a public space and also connects pedestrians to the building complex.

Technical information

In addition as a place for creative industries training and preserving heritage buildings, Medan Creative School also supports commercial activities such as exhibition, retail and cafe. Buildings are also designed to be comfortable for disability and senior citizen, such as the use of ramps on plaza, sloping floor elevations, and an elevator in new building.

The materials used in this building are brick, concrete, steel and glass. However, the two new buildings are designed differently. The first building is duplicated from the old building style and the second building is made with a more modern style and thinner mass which is in contrast to the surrounding environment, but still related to the old building. The new buildings are conditioned as a complement to the previous building.

For natural lighting in old building style, top lighting is used in the form of skylights and voids. In large volume buildings, natural lighting is difficult to reach in the corridor located in the middle of the building. Therefore, a skylight roof is needed as an innovation related to building technology. The use of light from the top will get constant lighting throughout the day. Meanwhile, the other new building with a thinner mass use side lighting with a single loaded corridor as a natural lighting.

2D shop drawing and 3d visualizations are included in the panel above. Besides that there's also a panel that explains the massing process for designing this revitalization project.

Site Coordinate (3.587987,98.676585)

Co-authors

Annisa Widhiyanti - University of Sumatera Utara