Glass brick residence in Bayi Village / XAUAT
- Area :
400 m²
year:
2021
-
Lead architects:
Bo Gao, Yiqiong Wang
The original appearance of the home. The residence is located in Bayi Village, Linwei District, Weinan City, Shaanxi Province. It was originally built around 2000 as a one-story flat-roofed building with a masonry construction with interior beams and structural columns. The safety inspection and identification of the residential structure showed that the building’s safety performance met current code requirements, but due to years of unoccupied occupancy there were problems such as water seepage from the roof, poor indoor ventilation and lighting, and mold. on the interior walls. The owner wants to renovate and expand the residence, increase the functional units, continue the sloped roof form of Guanzhong folk residence, preserve the green areas of the courtyard and control the construction cost.
Design strategy. Through the structural inspection of the existing residence, the internal structural characteristics were understood, and the principles of safety, adaptability and economy of the additional structure were followed, and the mixed structure of “masonry + frame” was adopted for the second floor, where the main body is a masonry structure with ring beams and structural columns to enhance structural rigidity; the glass brick wall part is reinforced concrete frame structure with flexible room division; the roof is a ring system. The roof is a light steel structure with a groove system, which greatly reduces the dead weight, and the upper layer is covered with mechanism red tiles.
Improve the function of living. The spatial distribution of the fenced well and the main residence is limited from south to north, with a front, middle and back yard. The front courtyard is used as a buffer area between the residence and the national road to meet the needs of parking and crop planting; the central courtyard is the primary living area to meet the needs of daily rest, entertainment and landscape views, and the rear garden is the storage and equipment tubewell. The renovated two-story apartments adopt a centralized layout of transportation space around the residential function. On the first floor, the entrance door and sunroom are set in a southerly direction, and the public spaces such as the living room, dining room and bar are arranged in the middle. The straight staircase on the west side provides vertical transport to the second floor, which is an extended living room function and is arranged in an L shape around the outdoor terrace following the logic of the upper and lower floors. The south-facing pitched roof is equipped with solar panels to meet the home’s daily electricity needs.
Use of green technology. Ecology and the environment are closely linked to the residents’ quality of life. The glass block housing focuses on the adaptive application of green and livable quality improvement technology for modern vernacular housing with emphasis on the influence of local wind, light, water and other natural factors on the housing, and copes with climate change in all seasons.
Light and ventilation: the south-facing sunroom has large hollow glass blocks and long windows to maximize the area of light; the upper part of the living room removes part of the original floor slab to add light and ventilation shafts to improve indoor lighting, while thermal pressure is used to promote natural ventilation. The exterior windows are made of aluminum frame and Low-E insulating glass, and the opening area is strictly controlled to facilitate natural ventilation in summer and to block wind and cold outside in winter.
Noise and sound reduction: In order to solve the traffic noise problem on National Highway 108, which is adjacent to the south side of the house, the bedrooms on the first and second floors of the house are distributed on the north side, and the sun room is arranged as a room. buffer in the south direction, respectively, and hollow glass blocks with excellent sound insulation ability and high light transmission speed are used on the south-facing outer wall to achieve a good noise and sound dampening effect.
Heat preservation and insulation: The roof continues the form of the “dull roof” in Guanzhong’s traditional dwelling, which serves as a climate buffer in winter and summer and plays the role of heat preservation and insulation for the primary living space; the sunroom is installed on the south-facing exterior wall, and high-performance phase change heat storage materials are applied to the wall to absorb heat during the day and slowly release heat at night; the exterior walls of the bedroom and living room adopt internal heat preservation. The external walls of bedrooms and living rooms are all made of internal thermal insulation to meet the demand for thermal insulation. Solar panels are placed on the roof to provide power for indoor graphene heating equipment, realizing carbon-free heating for the entire home.
Separation of rainwater and sewage: In order to realize the recycling of rainwater and the replenishment of sewage treatment in the Guanzhong area, a rainwater purification system is set up on the east side of the central courtyard in combination with water features, which are gradually introduced. into the reservoir to provide irrigation and landscape water for the farm; indoor bathrooms are connected to the three-format septic tank on the east side of the rear yard through pipes and discharged to the agricultural land on the north side after being cleaned by the ecological wetland; domestic waste water such as shower, laundry and kitchen is discharged into the nearby Domestic waste water from shower, laundry and kitchen is discharged into the three-cylinder sewage treatment pond on the west side of the backyard, and after purification, it is discharged. into the cistern in the front garden through a pipe for watering agricultural land.
New model of rural housing. The use of cheap technical means in the weak economic areas of rural areas and the financial investment in the overall function and performance of the housing are of great importance for the renovation and upgrading of existing housing in the north-western landscape. The original features of traditional buildings and public housing are reflected in their choice of location, orientation, layout, spatial combination, building materials and structural treatments, which reflect people’s thoughts and experiences in creating a good living environment in accordance with the laws of nature. From design to construction, Weinan Bayi Village Glass Brick housing focuses on Guanzhong’s linguistic context, materials, innovation and technology, combines traditional construction techniques with modern architectural space design theory, reasonably uses and inherits the original material structure and structural system, creates a new model of Guanzhong vernacular housing , and through experiments and demonstration studies, gradually moving vernacular housing to modern and green.
