Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016 Winner: Hutong Children’s Library and Art Centre Beijing, China

Architect: ZAO/standardarchitecture – Client: Dashilar Investment

Project Gallery

Aga Khan Award for Architecture

For the locals, it is so uncommon to experience such a space, the gate is always open, So many people peek in and come into the courtyard with a high level of curiosity, neighbourhood children may stop by after school, read a book or play together before getting picked up by their parents. AKTC / Zhang MingMing, ZAO, standardarchitecture

The project is designed to be a communal children’s reading room and art centre, free and open to the neighbourhood. AKTC / Wang Ziling, ZAO, standardarchitecture

Trail of brick stairs leads up to the roof, where children and parents can delve into the branches and foliage of the big tree. AKTC / Zhang MingMing, ZAO, standardarchitecture

By inserting an outdoor staircase alongside each structure, the architect created viewing platforms to survey the neighbourhood while enjoying a breath of rare chlorophyll-laced air within the tree’s branches. AKTC / Wang Ziling, ZAO, standardarchitecture

View from the roof to the courtyard, once a typical “Da-Za-Yuan”-big messy courtyard- the architects redesigned, renovated and reused the informal add-on structures instead of eliminating them like most recent renovation practices. AKTC / Su Shengliang, ZAO, standardarchitecture

Concrete with Chinese ink, recycled grey brick and warm plywood were chosen to blend in seamlessly with the surrounding urban context. AKTC / Su Shengliang, ZAO, standardarchitecture

Under a big Chinese scholar tree, one of the former kitchens was redesigned into a 6m² mini art space made from traditional bluish grey brick, with accessible roof. AKTC / Su Shengliang, ZAO, standardarchitecture

The tree acts as a central figure to capture all the masses and activities, and offers a varying ambiance through the seasons. AKTC / Wang Ziling, ZAO, standardarchitecture

The Number 8, Cha’er Hutong courtyard is a typical da-za-yuan – big messy courtyard – once occupied by over a dozen families, over the past fifty years, each family built a small add-on kitchen in the courtyard, these add-on structures redesigned by the architect are usually wiped out for they are considered as urban scrap. AKTC / Zhang MingMing, ZAO, standardarchitecture

AKTC / Zhang MingMing, ZAO, standardarchitecture

AKTC / Su Shengliang, ZAO, standardarchitecture

Three communal interior spaces are used in very informal and relaxed circumstances without intimidation. One space serves as reading space, the others as an art class and a dance class. AKTC / Su Shengliang, ZAO, standardarchitecture

Steel panels were used as structure and only lightweight steel frames were laid simply on the ground, to form a “floating” foundation in order to protect the roots of the old tree. AKTC / Wang Ziling, ZAO, standardarchitecture

The spontaneity of childhood is captured in how interiors are elevated, allowing for seating to become ad hoc tables or benches to stretch out, creating multiple degrees of intimacy for children and parents together. AKTC / Zhang MingMing, ZAO, standardarchitecture

Steps form an elevated reading nook in the library are mimicked by a wide picture window, allowing children to climb up and look out as they flip through a volume or two. AKTC / Wang Ziling, ZAO, standardarchitecture

The project fulfils a social need for the community, it acts as a neighbourhood day care space, rather than each family shutting itself up in restricted spaces. AKTC / Zhang MingMing, ZAO, standardarchitecture

Project description

The hutongs of Beijing are fast disappearing. The residential compounds, with their layering of spaces and multiple courtyards, are often viewed as messy and insalubrious – almost as slums. If they find a place in the modern city, it is often in sanitised form, as a tourist attraction, filled with boutiques. The attempt to find a new use for this traditional building form – one that would benefit the local community – motivated this proposal for a space that would serve both the pupils from the nearby primary school and the hutong’s remaining, mostly elderly, residents. Besides a children’s library and exhibition space, the centre hosts a local handicrafts studio and classes in painting and dance.

Key to the design was the renovation and reuse of existing elements in the courtyard, which included informal add-on structures, such as kitchens. The massing follows the conditions found at the site, and the height of the boxes is dictated by the height of the roof around them. Gathering together all the masses and activities is a giant scholar tree, perhaps 600 years old – as old as the courtyard itself.

The redesigned buildings in the centre of the courtyard have a lightweight steel structure and a ‘floating’ foundation – hollow steel beams simply laid on the ground – to protect the roots of the tree. The materials – chosen to blend with the urban surroundings – are principally grey bricks, both new and recycled, and, for the library, concrete mixed with Chinese ink – an innovation tested here for the first time.

Inside the library, windows frame unusual views out into the courtyard and follow the interior functions – as, for example, in the glazed reading nook that children reach by climbing some steps. The adaptable furniture – seating that can become an ad-hoc table or a ‘secret cave’, say – accommodates the spontaneity of childhood.

On the outside, the insertion of an outdoor staircase alongside each structure creates viewing platforms amid the tree’s branches where the users of the courtyard – children and adults alike – can survey the neighbourhood and enjoy a breath of rare, chlorophyll-laced air.

Jury citation

“Urbanisation in China has a complex relation with the past. How do you move forward while recognising the values of the built heritage? The response to this question has often led to a stark contrast between the old and the new, with the latter being seen as the sole marker of progress. Yet others have sought alternative strategies for urbanisation. Increasingly there is a call for a more nuanced consideration of the old and the existing, as potentially indispensable parts of urban developments.”

“The Micro Yuan’er Children’s Library and Art Centre is an exemplary representative of the modification and adaptive re-use of a historic building. In Beijing, as in other places, a growing number of hutongs are being restored. But this hutong is not a typical restoration project. By providing new structures and new public uses in the middle of the building’s courtyard, it entwines the private lives of the older inhabitants with the public use of a new children’s library and art centre.”

“The architectural strategy of this modest but highly articulate intervention is to use the existing buildings and landscape as the armature for the new construction. The use of a limited palette of materials, such as brick, wood and glass, helps the space of the courtyard to become denser through the addition of the new structures.”

“The hutong provides an example of how the adaptive re-use of an older building can become the basis for a new form of micro-urbanism that constructs productive reciprocities between the private and the public. This is an approach that can be potentially replicated in other locations and within a diversity of communities.”

“Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge is a successful example of a calculated risk taken by a client, met with the youth and enthusiasm of a group of competent professionals whose work is commendable and deserving of recognition.”

About Zhang Ke – www.standardarchitecture.cn – www.z-a-o.cn

Zhang Ke received his master’s degree in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, having previously studied at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He is the founder of studio ZAO/standardarchitecture, a new-generation design firm engaged in practices of planning, architecture, landscape and product design. Based on a wide range of completed buildings and landscapes over the past ten years, the studio has emerged as the most critical and realistic practice among the young generation of Chinese architects and designers.

Consciously distancing itself from many of the other ‘typical’ young-generation architects who are swallowed up by a trend of noise-making, the office remains detached in a time of media frenzy and their focus is consistently positioned to enable the realisation of urban visions and ideas. Although ZAO/standardarchitecture’s built works often involve
exceptionally provocative visual results, their buildings and landscapes are always rooted in their historic and cultural settings, the outcomes produced through a process of intellectual debate.

Project Data

Aga Khan Award for Architecture Website

www.akdn.org/architecture

2016 Winners

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016 Winner: Friendship Centre Gaibandha, Bangladesh

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016 Winner: Bait ur Rouf Mosque Dhaka, Bangladesh

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016 Winner: Hutong Children’s Library and Art Centre Beijing, China

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016 Winner: Superkilen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016 Winner: Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge, Tehran

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016 Winner: Issam Fares Institute Beirut, Lebanon

2016 Nominated Projects

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 19): Makoko Floating School, Lagos, Nigeria - The Floating School is a prototype structure whose main aim is to generate an alternative building system and urban culture for the populations of Africa’s coastal regions. The triangular A-frame or pyramid

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 18): 40 Knots House, Tehran, Iran - Creating a small and low budget apartment building in Tehran does not leave much space for creativity, yet an architect can try to do something with the material, textures, outer envelope and light.

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 17): Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka, Bangladesh - In an increasingly dense neighbourhood of Dhaka, the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque was raised on a plinth on a site axis creating a 13-degree angle with the qibla direction, which called for creativity with the layout.

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 16): Bunateka Libraries, various locations, Kosovo - A series of public libraries for disadvantaged youth in rural areas. “The idea is that books are a source of knowledge just like water is the source of life,” says the architect.

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 15): Casa-Port New Railway Station, Casablanca, Morocco - Casa-Port railway station (French: Gare de Casa-Port) is a "Moroccan National Railway" station in the centre of Casablanca. This transport hub, designed to anticipate 25 million passenger trips-per-year in the future

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 14): Ceuta Public Library, Spain - Ceuta, is a small Spanish enclave city on the Moroccan soil. The site of the Ceuta library is located on the original Marinid dynasty's archaeological area...The excavation ground was included in the interior space of the public building, and the architects

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 13): Doha Tower, Doha, Qatar - It is a cylindrical volume that measures 45m in diameter. The steel and concrete structure follows a diamond shaped grid that bends along the virtual surface of the cylinder. The façade uses a double skin system. The exterior skin is composed

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 12): Friendship Centre, Bangladesh - The Friendship Centre in Gaibandha, Bangladesh, was built for the local NGO Friendship, which provides services for poor citizens of the region. Built by Dhaka-based architect Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury, it was designed

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 11): Guelmim School of Technology, Morocco - Situated in Guelmim, Morocco, 200 kilometres south of Agadir and known as the “door of the Sahara”, the School was conceived in line with a policy of decentralisation and making education more accessible to those living in remote areas.

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 10): Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, Beirut, Lebanon - The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) building at the American University of Beirut (AUB) advances the university’s academic mission in the 21st century

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 9): King Fahad National Library, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - The King Fahad National Library is one of the most important cultural buildings in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was completed and went into use for its intended purpose in November 2013.

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 8): Manouchehri House, Textile Centre & Boutique Hotel, Kashan, Iran - The Manouchehri House is a boutique hotel and textile centre situated in Kashan’s historic residential neighborhood, in the province of Isfahan. The project entailed the restoration of a 19th century merchant home

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 7): Micro Yuan’er – Hutong/courtyard Renovation, Beijing, China - Micro Yuan'er is a project by zhang ke’s Beijing-based standardarchitecture, which revitalizes a historic hutong courtyard. The inserted structure, which contains a miniature art space and library

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 6): Restoration of Nasrid Tower, Almeria, Spain - This project by Castillo Miras Arquitectos explores the dichotomy between the solid, ageless construction of the existing 13th century Nasrid Tower, and the provisional, light, and degradable nature of the contemporary.

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 5): New Power Station – Baku, Azerbaijan - The Power Station is located on a natural harbor in the Bay of Baku, which used to serve as a small shipyard for the ships working for the oil platforms. The original brief asked the architects to demolish the old

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 4): Royal Academy for Nature Conservation – Ajloun Forest Reserve, Jordan - Royal Academy for Nature Conservation in Ajloun Forest Reserve of Jordan is “the first centre in the Arab world” specialised in offering training on nature conservation.

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 3): Superkilen – Public Park – Copenhagen, Denmark - Superkilen is a public park in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, Denmark. A public space promoting integration across lines of ethnicity, religion and culture. A meeting place for residents of Denmark

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 2): Tabiat – Pedestrian Bridge – Tehran, Iran - Tabiat Bridge, literally: “Nature Bridge” is the largest pedestrian overpass built in Tehran, Iran. The architects first conceived the two-to-three level, 270-metre-long curved pedestrian bridge of varying width

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2014-2016 Cycle (Shortlisted Project # 1): Thread – Artists Residency & Cultural Center – Senegal - Thread is a socio-cultural centre that houses two artists’ dwellings and studio space for local and international artists. An ecologically sensitive meeting place which demonstrates how art and architecture can be part of rural life

Researched & Compiled by Arif Ali