Site plan
Fengtai courtyards
Exchange semester project at the central ACADEMY of fine arts in beijing
Assignment: CREATE a project with a self designated program along beijing's line 10 metro line
Teachers: Han Tao, David Porter, He Keren
Beijing is in many ways a city of extremes. Its public spaces are often variations on the super public or the super private. As a pedestrian one might often get the feeling that one is caught between a rock and hard place; the infinity of motor highways and huge plazas on the one hand, and non-public gated communities on the other. This project’s intention has been to take a closer look at the degrees of privacy that exist within a city, and how these can be played upon, like a gradient, to help shape communities and increase the liveability of urban spaces.
The site of Fengtai, in Beijing’s south-west corner, is intimately linked with worker towns, as it sits between multiple factory districts. It already hosts a full range of worker class housing, from hutongs of the early last century to modern high-rise developments.
A few houses of a once existing hutong and a community farm still exist on the site
The site sits between two large factories and hostst three historical typologies of worker housing
The site acts as a bottleneck between two residential areas in east and west and the metro in the north
The project visualises a new type of worker town which is focused on smaller, village-sized communities, which are intimately connected through courtyards and shared necessities, in exchange for smaller building volumes. These “villages” are then connected to a grid of public and semi-public pedestrian roads and courtyards, which form the larger community of the city.
The private courtyards withing the community
The public courtyards within the project
Public walkways and their endpoints
Axonometric drawing of the new community
A block within the community
A block within the community
A studio flat for singles within the building
Further material:
Project location: