Redefining Voids

In the period of rapid urbanisation and development of Beijing, the urban fringe has become the most inactive and deprived area of construction and urbanisation resulting in large voids of abandoned and unattractive land. Situated on the fringes of the Central Business District (CBD), Beijing, the project seeks to reclaim the voids of land left in the wake of the expansion of the CBD through the regeneration of large voids of land created as a result of large infrastructural highways and interchanges. The CBD expansion is seeing the rapid creation of large commercial and financial complexes to the East of the city, however at a huge cost to inhabitants that currently reside within the proposed zone. The CBD expansion zone is currently located on a site that is predominantly residential, however with only 25% of the new buildings being designated for residential use, it will force the majority of the inhabitants to move out to the periphery of the CBD expansion area.

Urban regeneration and expansion schemes such as this example of the CBD, has resulted in a remarkable improvement in the quality of the urban fabric as well as the quality of life for many of Beijing’s citizens. As a result of this modernisation much of the historic urban fabric of the city has been lost, especially in the case for the traditional courtyard housing and hutong neighbourhoods. The extent and character of this transformation suggests that Beijing is being replaced as much as it is being developed. The hutong and courtyard housing neighbourhoods constitute part of a language form that is intrinsically expressive of traditional Chinese culture and Chinese way of living, however as these residential neighbourhoods are being replaced by more modernistic dense urban forms, an important part of Chinese culture is lost. This has invoked a dramatic social and cultural shift in the way communities now interact, socialise and recreate.

The project seeks to redefine and translate the traditional hutong organisation into a modular infrastructural organisation which proliferates and creates a series of new residential neighbourhoods within the cities voids. By creating a prototypical hybrid living typology which weaves together the notion of the traditional courtyard housing and the modern dense residential tower typology, the intention is to recreate the traditional way of living by emphasising on the requirement of public amenity space as a catalyst for increasing social interaction and community cohesion.

Focusing on a creating a dense residential modular building typology, which resembles the organisation of hutong housing units, the intent is to develop a hybrid intelligent prototype which can incorporate the cultural functions of Chinese courtyard housing, yet can also be expressive of the requirement for density which is prevailent in modern Chinese residential towers. The ambition is to create a series of integrated public and private amenity spaces which are nestled into the modulated residential configuration.

Aggregrated amongst the gyratory of the infrastructural highways, the proposed linear proliferation of the modulated construct performs as a habitable barrier to filter and diffuse the harsh atmospheric conditions which exist surrouning the site. Through a series of differentiated aggregations that are determined by the existing harsh site conditions, a series of various green habitable clusters are created which aim to diffuse and mitigate the amount of sound and vehicular pollution that reaches the central voids within high way junctions; as a result creating a series of occupiable havens in what currently is an unoccupiable space that can be utilised for further development. The modular prototype distributes a continuous series of 3 interwoven programmes that form a labyrinth green network with intrinsic articulation qualities which are expressive of the traditional hutong network and are formally integrated into the system which act as placeholders for residential, green recreational and small commercial zones. Using the porosity of the aggregations as a means of defining articulation and orientation, the cluster formations aim to maximise the amount of natural daylight through the control of density aggregation.