Beijing, China
MAD’s Ma Yansong has built the firm’s first affordable social housing project for Beijing Public Housing Construction and Investment Center which covers an area of 93,900 square meters and a total construction area reaching 473,300 square meters.
Named Baiziwan, the development consists of 12 residential buildings divided by roads into six areas and connected by raised walkways and a “floating park.”
The blocks are built around green spaces connected by raised pathways.
MAD places commercial spaces on the first level and designs community spaces on the second level. A sweeping red-colored walking pathway and running track spans throughout the complex – and partly turns into an elevated park or bridges.
The studio divides the plot into six blocks derived from the city grid and it consists of 12 residential buildings collectively providing 4,000 apartment units.
Since the completion of the project, almost 3,000 families have moved in.
This complex is developed to offer dwellings for welfare dependents and young professionals.
The project emerges as a culmination of Ma Yansong’s extensive research into social housing, which began in 2014.
Under the thematic topic “The Sociality of Social Housing,” MAD’s research explores the historical development and design of social housing across different countries.
The research has been further developed by Ma Yansong’s own engagements with this subject while teaching at Tsinghua University and the Beijing Architecture University.
According to MAD, this commission offered an opportunity to improve the living conditions of low-income communities and introduce a fresh perspective to the current dull residential design image in China.
The scheme connects the existing urban fabric and the neighborhood with the city.
The six blocks feature the main avenue cutting through the center of the site.
The large site is fragmented into a much smaller human scale.
At the street level, the central avenue incorporates a range of commercial and convenience spaces, such as shops, cafes, restaurants, kindergartens, pharmacies, bookstores, and elder care facilities.
The arterial route through the center of the scheme fosters connections between the neighborhood and city.
With the human-scaled site planning and diversity of spaces, the design creates a vibrant and open urban life across the new neighborhood.
MAD opens the ground level to a wider urban audience, and the second level can only be accessed by the residents and offers a communal outdoor landscape for residents.
A red-colored pedestrian circuit weaves around all six blocks, forming a large above-ground park with a variety of communal functions including a gym, community gardens, badminton court, children’s playground, ecological sanctuary, and communal support services.
MAD’s scheme incorporates staggered half-floors and semi-opened gray spaces of various scales throughout the design.
Despite the rigid green coverage ratio of residential design specifications and the high density required for city center living, the scheme strives to provide green coverage on ground level, the second-level park, and rooftop, ensuring residents enjoy a holistic setting with strong connections to nature and the outdoors and achieving a green coverage of 47 percent.
The standardized green coverage of the commercial residential compounds is 30 percent.
The blocks have Y-shaped footprints that combine with gradual stepping forms and staggered heights which fabricates an overall “mountain” topography across the site.
The interface between buildings forms semi-enclosed spaces, promoting a sense of intimacy and community across the site on a human scale,” claims MAD.
“From afar, the scheme’s simple white façade and undulating mountain form create an enriching addition to the city skyline.”
The project’s 4,000 residential units are distributed in six general typologies where three of them are ultra-low energy consumption typologies, spanning areas of 40 square meters, 50 square meters, and 60 square meters.
The studio used the light-coated board as the partitions between the rooms, enabling ease of maintenance and flexibility for decoration by residents.
“With the plot ratio of 3.5 and the height limit of 80 meters, the high density has caused many restrictions on a general layout for each unit’s daylight calculation,” MAD adds.
Throughout the design process, the studio sought to ensure that every room across the project should get sufficient sunlight.
The resulting scheme, therefore, adopts a Y-branch building form, with communal corridors located along the north face of each building to enhance sunlight exposure in the residential units.
MAD also followed the principles of an environmentally friendly construction process, the brief of the clients required that over 80 percent of the building components should be prefabricated off-site.
According to the studio, “this prefabricated method allows for a higher quality of housing production in a controlled, systematized way.”
The scheme contains two ultra-low energy consumption buildings, also known as “passive housing,” with low heating and cooling loads, allowing the buildings to reduce energy consumption by 90 percent.
Project: Baiziwan Social Housing
Architects: MAD
Principal Partners in Charge: Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, and Yosuke Hayano
Associate Partners: Liu Huiying and Fu Changrui
Design Team: He Xiaokang, Zheng Chengwen, Shang Li, Xu Chen, Li Guangchong, Wang Deyuan, Zheng Fang, Tong Shangren, Mujung Kang, Zhang Tingfu, Zhang Long, Zhang Kai, Kazushi Miyamoto, Yukan Yanagawa, Yu Zhipeng, Tomasz Czarnecki, Davide Signorato, Natalia Giacomino, Sear Nee, Yuan Yiwen, Steven Chaffer Park, Dookee Chung, Hiroki Fujino, Jiang Xuezhu, Chen Luman, Dina Khaki, and Yang Xuebing
Client: Beijing Public Housing Construction and Investment Center
Structure Consultant: CCDI International Design Consultants Co., Ltd.
First Stage Construction: Beijing Uni.-Construction Group Co., Ltd
Second Stage Construction: Beijing Construction Engineering Group Co., Ltd
Supervisory Organization: Beijing Innovation Construction Engineering Management Co., Ltd
Prefabrication Production: Beijing Yantong Construction Components Co., Ltd
