Ruichang Housing, Chinese Homes, Jiangxi Project, Residential Design Images

Ruichang Housing, China

Architecture Competition Entry for Molewa, Jiangxi, China – design by Vazio Arquitetura

2 Jul 2015

Ruichang Housing in Jiangxi

Design: Vazio Arquitetura

Location: Ruichang, Jiangxi province, China

New Ruichang Housing in Jiangxi, China

“Molewa” was an architectural competition for a new neighborhood in Ruichang, Jiangxi province, China. Our proposal bet on an image both unique and harmonic: a residential building in tune with the idea of a new era of Chinese architecture – one less blatant and more attentive to the local context.

The proposal for Ruichang Housing is sustainable, relays and updates traditional elements, avoids free formal gestures, seeks a sensible cost-benefit ratio in its innovations, and presents a careful architecture vis-à-vis the vernacular architecture of southern China.

Formally, the building is like a stack of apartments piled up in an informal fashion; in a random language where this informality generates surprises and repetitions.

The “failures” in the stacking of the apartments correspond to covered terraces that function as private gardens: some apartments have terraces that permeate or pierce the building mass. External side stairs, present in these apartments, allow you to split the use of a terrace between two apartments. Providing lightness and pace to the building, they can be rearranged depending on the wishes of the developer: the design may comprise more or less terraces depending on the residents profile, the desired construction cost, and the local market reality.

The composition of the stacked flats is articulated by means of a structure that resembles a traditional Chinese pattern. This allows the appearance of the building somewhat informal shape: a two-dimensional pattern that, applied in three dimensions, generates structural and spatial complexities.

This is why the structure sometimes is shown up on the facade and sometimes is hidden into the masonry, so evicting a boring orthogonal modular structure.