Press Release
Xizhimen Port Apartment by Zhe Wang Receives the Silver A' Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
The international grand jury of the 2021 - 2022 A' Design Award & Competition recognizes Zhe Wang for architecture, building and structure design
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 28, 2022 /DesignNewswire/ Xizhimen Port Apartment by Zhe Wang, designed for Beijing Sza Architectural Design Consultant, has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Architecture, Building and Structure Design category, A' Design Award & Competition has announced. The result belongs to the 2021 - 2022 A' Design Award & Competition and was decided through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
The Silver A' Design Award Explained
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
About Xizhimen Port Apartment
Xizhimen Port is an apartment building in Beijing, China. The ten-story structure was built in the 1980s and later renovated for young urban tenants. The new facade is formed by aluminum window frames that project out from the exterior wall. The frames organize the exposed beams and columns of the original building and provide space for the air conditioning unit of each room. Inside each frame, the color shifts from orange at the top to pale yellow at the bottom. Added windows on the east and west walls increase daylight by 50 percent.
About Zhe Wang
Wang Zhe has 18 years of architectural design experience. In 2004, he joined the New York office of KPF, one of the world's most renowned architectural firms, rising to associate director in 2007. As the chief architect and project manager, he has led the design of many large-scale projects in China and Asia, including urban planning, multi-purpose development projects, Grade A office buildings, super five-star hotels, and shopping malls. Before joining KPF, Wang Zhe worked for QPK Architecture in New York and Ayer Saint Gross in Maryland.
Award Record
This recognition makes Zhe Wang a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Architecture, Building and Structure Design Award
The A' Architecture Design Award is an international architectural design competition recognizing good architectural designs by best architects worldwide. The competition is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to architectural design studios, building contractors, structural engineering firms and architecture and design consultants from all countries. Entries typically include skyscrapers, museums, residential buildings, commercial complexes, educational institutions and religious structures. Awarded architectural projects are published at https://designers.org/design-category/architecture
About A' Design Award & Competition
A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade organized annually since 2008. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The A' Design Award has a philanthropic mission to advance society through good design by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Entries are peer reviewed and anonymously evaluated by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. The A' Design Prize granted to eligible laureates includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, the upload of a work and the preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. Further information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/126308
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/126308
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!126308
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/310081
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Xizhimen Port Apartment
- Function
- Apartment
- Category
- Architecture, Building and Structure Design
- Discipline
- Spatial Design
- Industry
- Architecture
- Colors
- Steel Blue, Dark Slate Blue, Cornflower Blue, Sienna and Saddle Brown
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Beijing Sza Architectural Design Consultant
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Zhe Wang
- Country
- China
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2021 - 2022
- Design ID
- #126308
Credits
- Team
- Wang Zhe, Shi Wei, Wen Zewei, Wang Meilin, Zhang Yan, Han Qi and Hong Wei
- Image Credits
- Photography: Jin Weiqi
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- One's residence and clothing represent a person's temperament. Apartments designed to inspire innovative young people naturally need a vibrant, attractive facade. The design organizes the variously spaced exposed beams and columns on the original facade while providing the housing for each room’s AC unit. The new facade was designed as a series of aluminum window frames projecting out from the exterior wall. The scale of the window frames increases at the building corner as if the entire building were twisting on the square as a vivid urban sculpture.
- Inspiration
- As a trendy apartment for innovative young people, its appearance needs to jump out of the surrounding old community environment, but can not affect the harmonious coexistence. Inspired by the scenery of the lunar eclipse, the facade is designed with bright colors which bring rich expression. The inside of the window sleeve changes from orange at the top to pale yellow at the bottom, like the color spectrum of the lunar eclipse, and also celebrating Beijing's golden autumn while the Port Apartment opens in October.
- Research
- This building carries many common memories of the "same song" KTV, which is also one of its old identities. The outdated image, depressed tonality, and precipitated vicissitudes of this existing building are no longer in line with these young people who are trying to be innovative in the new era. Upgrading the appearance of the old buildings, reshaping the image of the city, stimulating the vitality of the community, and also providing urban young people with a warm home with a story and a dream, become a new topic faced by this project.
- Challenge
- The development of the Xizhimen Port Apartments was driven by the challenge of balancing the existing structural conditions of the 10-story building constructed in the 1980s with bold architectural expression, current building technologies, and efficient design. The original building has a large number of reinforced beams and columns exposed on the facade with variant spacing; also the renovated facade needs to find space for the AC unit of each room. So the architect designed an aluminum window frame projecting out from the exterior wall.
- Realization and Technology
- The architect made different adjustments to each floor. By adding windows on the east and west side wall at typical floors, a more active urban facade is presented, at the same time, daylighting for each floor is increased by 50%. It provides flexible and private spaces for young tenants within a limited building area. The core of the room unit layout at how to provide customers with a safe and comfortable room space under the premise of limited space.
- Operation and Interaction
- The vibrant facade of the apartment was designed to inspire its residents of innovative young people as a new model for urban renewal and architectural renovation. With the development of the city to a certain stage, renewal design is bound to gradually become the main trend of urban development. Xizhimen Port Apartment is an exploration, hoping to gradually practice another way of urban renewal in addition to the point type experimental project and the surface type "large-scale demolition and construction".
- Project Duration and Location
- This project completed in Oct. 2018 in Beijing, China.
- Specifications
- Floors: 10-story Site Area: 2872sqm Total Area:11000sqm
- Keywords
- Architecture renovation, Facade design, Residential, Apartment
