4 Mountains, Beijing (Chine)

Economic Affordable Housing Project in BEIJING

This project is a poetic interpretation of the big block buildings the flower all over Asia. The 2000 units are distributed over 4 buildings and are allegorically linked to the surrounding mountains and countryside just beyond. The form of a hill allows interior circulation among large planted terraces to the south, terraces that serve to prolong the collective and social space: tea rooms, bars, restaurants, social activities.

Every build becomes a town and a landscape in which one can meander and discover different places. Emptiness as against fullness punctuates the place, for example suspended gardens. The hill form, higher at the north end, allows for sun to penetrate all the facades, as well as protection from the wind of the playful places of the park. The apartments for sale are at the top (“the glaciers”), the shinning snowy aspect of which is enabled by loggias closed in by glass walls that can be opened.

Instead of reproducing the same unit over a thousand times on either side of a central corridor, we have preferred complexity and variety in the units, which are not just apartments but “collective houses”. Organizing them as duplexes allows having central corridors only every 2 floors, which in turn allows more compactness and lower cost.