Description

Urban context

This solitary complex is based on tulous – the centuries-old round villages of
the Hakka people of China, which featured clay outer walls as much as 1.8 meters
thick to offer protection against attackers. This traditional form of housing
for as many as eight hundred people included living and storage space, stores,
and religious facilities within a building block. These three-story circular
grounds about fifty meters in diameter were arranged around a central courtyard
used for communal functions. As a rule, a small shrine marked the center. The
individual living cells were accessed from the courtyard via galleries. The
housing complex in Guangzhou translates this concept for the present day. An
autonomous building block of the city occupied a vacant urban lot within the
expanding cityscape of Nanhai.

Ground-floor zone

The interior of the site is reached by various passageways. There a broadly
networked, three-dimensional system of paths branches out. Stairs situated at
intersections provide access to the corridors on the upper levels by which the
apartment units are reached. Bridges and terraces on different levels create
common open areas that can be used in a variety of ways, compensating for the
maximal density, with more than fifty percent of the lot built over. A
plaza-like area was designed on the roofs of the five-story courtyard
structures.

Building structure

This modern tolou houses 287 apartments, various communal facilities, a
restaurant, and a hotel. As collective housing for poor migrant workers, it
offers minimum dwellings of a standard size of thirty-one square meters. Each is
to be occupied by a maximum of five people, that is, two families. Each unit has
its own sanitary facilities – a standard that even now is not a matter of course
in China’s traditional residential areas. Thanks to a mirrored layering of
access, housing unit, and private open space, there is a hierarchical sequence
of semipublic and private spaces. Because of the enormously high density of the
complex, great value was placed during planning on creating threshold spaces.
The sense of community inside the complex resembles that of a village.

Facade

Various layers of access corridors and private open spaces surround the living
cells on both sides. The facades of the galleries were deliberately kept closed
to preserve the private sphere. A loggia layer covers the entire building block
on the outward side with a second facade of prefab concrete parts and wood
panels, filtering the surroundings, providing natural ventilation, and
permitting views out but not views in.

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Originally published in: Ulrike Wietzorrek, Housing+: On Thresholds, Transitions, and Transparencies, Birkhäuser, 2014.