Xizhimen Port 公寓楼 by Zhe Wang is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 A' Design Award 银奖 in 建筑与结构设计 Competition Category.

银建筑· 2022

Xizhimen Port 公寓楼

by Zhe Wang

Client: Beijing Sza Architectural Design Consultant

A' Design Award 银奖 Winner in 建筑 Category

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Verified Award Winner

Verify Award Status for #126308

View at A' Design Award Press Release Award Badge

Colors

The Design

About Xizhimen Port 公寓楼

西直门港是位于中国北京的一栋公寓楼。这座十层建筑建于二十世纪八十年代，后经改造以服务年轻的城市租住人群。全新的立面由自外墙向外突出的铝制窗框构成。这些窗框整合了原建筑外露的梁柱结构，并为每个房间的空调外机提供了安放空间。每个窗框内部的色彩由顶部的橙色渐变至底部的浅黄色。东西两侧墙面新增的窗户使自然采光提升了百分之五十。

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award 银奖

Xizhimen Port 公寓楼是 A' Design Award 银奖得主，这是授予顶级、华美而令人印象深刻的设计的极为崇高的认可。银奖得主是极其卓越、极具创造力的作品，展现出其设计师杰出的专业技能、才华与敏锐。预计Xizhimen Port 公寓楼将成为一件出色的典范之作，兼具非凡的专业性与深刻的创新性。这件赢得 A' Design Award 银奖的设计是一项备受瞩目、令人钦佩的发明，造福并拓展艺术、科学、设计和技术的边界。Xizhimen Port 公寓楼是一件令人羡慕的创作，它唤起渴望，带来积极的情感，并激发惊叹与赞叹。

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

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.
Dimensions & Packaging: Floors: 10-story
Site Area: 2872sqm
Total Area:11000sqm
Tags: Architecture renovation, Facade design, Residential, Apartment
Production 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.
Design 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. The abundant aluminum window covers are like a horizontal combination of "Pandora's Boxes", using rhythmic changes to meet the objective functional requirements of the building.
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.
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.
Project Duration: This project completed in Oct. 2018 in Beijing, China.
Operation Flow: 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".
Team Members: Wang Zhe
Shi Wei
Wen Zewei
Wang Meilin
Zhang Yan
Han Qi
Hong Wei
Image Credits: Photography: Jin Weiqi