Shanghai, China
Chunhui Fang and the China Academy of Art have created a new model of integration of residential and business attributes by building a multi-level “village” that retains the original living habits of the village while saving land.
“Garden in the Sky”, or the Heping Village, has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The project is located in Heping Village in Shanghai on a plot that grows a variety of flat peach varieties, with a total area of 7.27 hectares and a building area of 71,200 square meters.
China’s rural areas have the vast majority of the population, and many villages have disappeared during urban expansion, not just in terms of development, but also in terms of young people.
Heping Village is a rural village near Shanghai where young people gradually leave to move to the city, even if the village is not far from the center of Shanghai.
One of the reasons they move is that the development of rural areas is slower than that of cities.
There is a huge gap between rural living facilities and the environment and Shanghai.
The architects hope that through the overall redesign and planning of Heping Village and activating the vitality of this village will attract people to return to the countryside.
They adopted a design combining landscape plants and ‘economic’ plants to surround the village with peach trees.
The renovated lake provides irrigation water for the village and regulates the temperature and humidity nearby, while also being a habitat for nearby animals.
The wooden promenade is covered with local black tiles, connecting rural residential areas and commercial streets.
At the same time, a promenade is also a leisure place for residents, replacing the traditional independent activity center, allowing residents to get closer to nature.
The design of the residential building is the focus of the entire project, combing organically farmland with modern houses.
Each floor has its own independent planting area, keeping the traditional rural elements and satisfying the planting habits of some residents.
This is the difference between rural development and urban development, which pays more attention to retention rather than substitution.
The team spent a lot of energy on the overall project to study the living habits and needs of local residents.
Although the information obtained is complex and fragmentary, there is an overall feeling that the residents as a whole hope for a more dynamic home.
The design takes into account not only the living environment and economic income of its users, but also the ability to attract young people to return to the countryside to live.
For the planning of the commercial street, the Design Institute of Landscape & Architecture adopted a modular design combining residence and commerce, with one side for residence and the other for work.
They reused the original building materials of the village as much as possible to reduce the carbon footprint.
In the process of building the promenade, they also used old peach wood and reduced the purchase of a lot of wood.
The tiles used are also from nearby villages specializing in the production of traditional tiles, which have a history of four hundred years.
The multi-layer design of the residential area combined with the soil has a good thermal insulation effect, and also greatly reduces energy consumption.
The urbanization of human society has brought about economic and technological development, and at the same time, it has inevitably wiped out many primitive rural areas.
This project is an answer to such predicaments.
Project: Garden in the Sky: Heping Village
Architects: China Academy of Art Co., Ltd., The Design Institute of Landscape & Architecture
Lead Architect: Chunhui Fang
General Contractor: Shanghai Yinteng Construction Development Co., Ltd.
Client: Heping Village
Photographs Courtesy of the Architects
