Description

This project description is an excerpt from the longer article “Superblock Configurations”. For a comparative analysis and further data on this and all other categories including accompanying graphs, please see the article “A Turning Point”.

At the junction of the Second Ring Road and the Airport Expressway sits the Linked Hybrid project by Steven Holl. Located on a smaller 6.18-hectare site that was part of the former Beijing First Paper Mill, one of the largest state-owned enterprises and work units from the socialist era, this development was undertaken by Modern Land (China), another real estate enterprise based in Beijing, established only in 2000 under Zhang Lei. To distinguish itself from its competitors, it marketed its properties using the “MOMA” concept, highlighting their aim and ability to provide high-quality living environments that are at once environmentally sustainable. According to the developer, with the high-technology energy-saving features built into their products, each MOMA project would only consume a third of the energy for an equivalent residential project at the same comfort level. Prior to the Linked Hybrid, which was marketed as “Modern MOMA”, the company had undertaken similar projects where internationally acclaimed architects were commissioned to design sustainable, mixed-use residential complexes, such as “Mega Hall MOMA” and “Pop MOMA”, also in the Dongcheng District of Beijing, by Dietmar Eberle. Both of these constituted Phases I to III of the MOMA development between 2000 and 2005, located on the southern blocks of the Beijing First Paper Mill, while “Modern MOMA” was Phase IV of the development, built on the northern block of the sprawling work unit after the Airport Expressway separating the two phases was completed in 2007.

When Holl was commissioned to design “Modern MOMA” in 2002, he set out to fulfill three personal aspirations at the urban scale through an architectural project. First, he sought to leverage on a large-scale, private development to shape public space. Second, drawing on a thesis he had begun in 1986 and published as Pamphlet Architecture 11: Hybrid Buildings, he wanted to realize this notion of hybrid buildings that would provide a programmatic diversity for residents to be able to live, work, and play on site. Finally, he aimed to introduce a three-dimensional approach, and in particular the ‘Z’ dimension, in shaping the urbanity.
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The complex that resulted is composed of eight residential towers clad in Holl’s signature steel-framed, grid-like façade, as well as a series of minor blocks. In his perspective, this exoskeletal frame would not only establish the exterior envelopes, it would also circumvent any individual articulation of the towers, endowing the project and the large public space it was intended to shape with an overall cohesiveness. On the ground floor, a mix of functions primarily commercial in nature, including stores, a hotel, restaurants, school, kindergarten, and a cinematheque was intended to provide a public realm accessible to both residents and visitors alike. To open up the programs to the public, the perimeter was to be lined with shops.
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On the upper level, the complex is linked via a loop of suspension bridges intended to house a café, hotel bar, gallery, and swimming pool, constituting the so-called ‘Z’ dimension. Within this elevated passage, which Holl choreographed as a unique spatial experience, unparalleled views of the city are provided within a sequence of scenes that unfold and take on different characteristics as the light varies with the time of the day and the seasons. By introducing this bridge route, linking what would otherwise have been isolated, free-standing towers, Holl’s aim was also to create a connected “city of spaces”, and one with a “vertical horizontality”.
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With a built area of 220,000 square meters, the complex contains 750 units in both the eight residential towers and the 11-storey cylindrically-shaped hotel. The eight residential towers are composed of four basic residential floor plans, with pairs of towers sharing the same unit layouts. In total, there are 20 different unit types in the eight residential towers alone, incorporating duplexes and lofts, ranging from 66 to 159 square meters in unit area. All the apartments utilize Holl’s concept of a ‘hinged space’, first materialized in his Nexus World Fukuoka project, where folding panels incorporated into the units allowed spaces to be modified easily for use as living spaces or bedrooms, adapting to the changing life-cycle needs of a family. The rooms do not exceed 10 meters in depth, with Holl paying special attention to the sightlines and abundance of light within each unit. Environmentally sustainable features on the site include geothermal wells that reach 100 meters below ground, as well as a greywater recycling system that would allow 220,000 litres of water to be recycled on a daily basis to irrigate the gardens, roof gardens, and to offset evaporation from the central pond, producing a savings on the order of 41 percent of drinking water. These technologies were incorporated in the early stage of architectural design in collaboration with Transsolar, ensuring that these mechanical systems were well-integrated into the project to be able to attain a degree of impact on the architectural design, including the elimination of cooling towers. Within the courtyard, the central pond is traversed by bridges, some with multiple right-angled folds similar to those typically found in traditional Chinese gardens. In the middle of the pool, two inverted pyramid-shaped structures house the cinematheque. Beyond this centerpiece, the landscape continues atop, with roof gardens on the three-storey plinths that are connected to the ones above the cinematheque. Behind the building complex rise three mounds named the “Mound of Youth”, “Mound of Middle Age”, and the “Mound of Old Age”, all of which are fitted with lifestyle amenities, including tennis courts, a Tai Chi platform, coffee and tea house, a wine tasting bar, and a meditation space.

The built outcomes at Linked Hybrid, however, present a stark divergence from Holl’s original design intents. Contrary to his ambition to achieve “maximum urban porosity”, the development was eventually closed off to the public with the erection of a wall around the perimeter, reverting yet again to the conventional gated community that Holl himself had set out to avoid. Unlike the Jian Wai SOHO project, which was privately developed but located within the CBD district overseen by the local government, the degree of openness and public accessibility here was determined by the private developers. The social condenser effect through the ground plane and the ‘Z’ dimension was never fully attained, with an active public realm contained largely on the ground floor. The popularity of the Linked Hybrid as a property investment rather than dwelling units that are fully occupied also accounted for the diminished residential population, adequate only to support just one and not both realms of programs. As such, while both projects had high population densities of around 57,140 people per square kilometer for Jian Wai SOHO and 31,262 people per square kilometer for the Linked Hybrid, and represent intense use of the sites, the different management strategies have led to vastly distinct results in the actual project performance.

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Originally published in: Peter G. Rowe, Har Ye Kan, Urban Intensities: Contemporary Housing Types and Territories, Birkhäuser, 2014.