Shunyi House in Beijing, China by reMIX studio

Article source: reMIX studio

The project is a renovation of a house of approximately 500 sqm originally divided in two floors and a basement, the extension of a villa of two screenwriters and their children located in Shunyi, Beijing. The initial client’s requirements were a volumetric expansion to accommodate new programs such as a double-height studio, a roof terrace, a kitchen garden, a projection room, and the transformation of the existing garden, needing to become an integral part of the building.

Main facade from the main gate , Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

• Architects: reMIX studio
• Project: Shunyi House
• Location: Beijing, China
• Photography: Xiazhi 
• Team: ChenChen, Federico Ruberto, Nicola Saladino, LiuYifu ,AniruddhaMukherjee, Xue Yang , XuKuanxin
• Client: private
• General Contractor: Beijing Jujianglvjian Construction ltd
• Size: Renovation 120 sqm, garden 200 sqm
• Year: 2014
• Status: Completed

Towards the main gate from the first level mezzanine/balcony, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

The intervention works as a unitary module internally composed of diverse levels of interconnection that operates as a montage, a juxtaposition and a progression of diverse spatial scales and characters.  The new volume is designed as a device of filtering environmental and programmatic factors, a spatial structure internally never secluding, never concluding but constantly modulating successive scalar sections through shadowy subtleties and diaphanous layerings. The space is rendered a unitary scene through the use of an intentionally reduced palette of materials. The material catalog is in fact condensed and composed just by a light metal structure, filtering aluminum louvers controlling shadows, transparencies and determining levels of privacy and finally a metal grid that works in combination with a resined white floor and a bamboo deck.

Eastfacade and shallow reflection pool, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

The main facade, geometric intersection from the garden, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

The seemingly uniform character of the intervention is in fact a narrative of continuously changing effects when explored and examined. From the garden to the top the gradual transformation of intensities -the modulation of lights, materials and colors- organizes a multiplicity of effects. Albeit reduced in type and fitting within an imposing diagrammatic organization the series of spaces manages to transform in a passive but calculated repository of effects that exalts and receives the heterogeneous changing conditions of light and temperature throughout the day and the seasons.

Eastfacade, pool, looking towards the side garden, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

The main facade at dusk, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

The occupants’ body is the living actor playing on a white stage of instantly mutating effects whilst the new volume with its newly defined connections become the bodily extension of the family-life, accommodating needs and forcing unexpected spatial relations to happen between the existing rooms and the new spaces. A series of mezzanines, balconies and roof terraces at various levels are linked by a continuous circulation, a bend of internal stairs and external ramps, interweaving in and around a glazed volume. The original structure, composed of two white boxes is then transformed into a dynamic system of interlaced and floating platforms that overlooking each other and opening in a sequence emphasizes the internal programmatic inter dependencies. The existing roof decks that were originally idle due to poor accessibility are then activated becoming an integral part of the interior, a natural continuation at higher levels of the garden. The programmatic segregation of the house existing spaces is replaced by a more ambiguous spatial mix of activities with the new double-height volume hosting a variety of activities such as reading, writing, debating, projecting to happen both autonomously and at unison on different levels.

Night view of the whole intervention taken from the main gate, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

Ground floor, from existing house towards the mezzanines, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

The garden is also reconfigured to become an integrated part of the scheme, interacting with the new massing to create a coherent spatial experience. The planting strategy responds to the need of privacy typical of dense housing developments: bamboo, ivy and high herbals introduce semi-transparent screens that filter the views. At the same time the vegetation is organized into various layers that maximize the depth of the garden. The reflection pool on the east side of the new volume blends the architecture and its landscape through rich effects of reflection and refraction on the water. Diverse autochthonous plant-communities create a rich mix of natural textures, whilst requiring minimal maintenance.

view of the ground floor studio, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

“Axial geomotries A”, view of the indoor/outdoor relation accessing the metal stairs, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

Folded metal stairs connecting the different mezzanines, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

View of the whole studio space from before accessing the last mezzanine, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

View from the last mezzanine towards the ramps and the semi-outdoor terraces, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

“Axial geometries B”, underground space lighting effect, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

Underground space, gym and relax area, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

Axial geometries C”, view of the ramping system connecting the gardening level (going down), the top deck/relax area (going up), view of the summer projection area on the right end, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

“Axial geometries D”, view of the ramping system connecting the gardening level (going down), the top deck/relax area (going up), view of the summer projection area on the right end, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

Semi-outdoor projection room in daylight, Image Courtesy © Xiazhi

Semi-outdoor projection room in the night, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

Location, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

Existing Condition, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

Design process , Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

Circulation concept, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

F1 plan, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

F2 plan, Image Courtesy © reMIX studio

reMIX Studio

reMIX is a Beijing based studio born from the experience that the three founding partners, Chen Chen, Federico Ruberto and Nicola Saladino, have developed during years of academic research and through the collaborations with various international firms, studying and inquiring diverse scales of interventions and procedural attitudes.

The studio expertise ranges from architecture to landscape and urban design. Moving on multiple grounds, analyzing, translating and transforming the interrelated peculiarities of performative logics, our work aims at establishing a transitional line of research that oscillates between processual complexities and material economies. The outcome is an expression of formal synergies, a modulation of analogical and digital processes, of diagrammatic and emergent organizations. Our structural geometries are gestural negotiations, converging results of constant conceptual revisions of forms and dogmas: mechanisms for debating, retracing and reframing.

A spatial chemistry is developed in order to achieve a synthesis of systemic performances, of signifying multiplicities, of social and environmental heterogeneities: admixtures ethereally fluctuating, constantly transforming. The understanding of the territory and its constitutive and constantly evolving metabolic networks and systems of power relations is the terrain onto which the redefinition and revision of presupposed dichotomies such as natural / artificial and local / global can depart, where the envisioning and construction of future social assemblages can finally take off.

We aim in sum for a critical integration, a non-linear incorporation, of architecture and landscape into a synthetic urban hybrid.

reMIX projects have been recognized by a number of important international design awards, including: 2011 and 2013 ASLA Honor Award, 2011 IFLA Design Award (Third Place), 2009 XI Krakow Architecture Triennial (Grand Prix) and 2014 Qianhai Island Masterplan International Competition (Third Place).

reMIX has been featured widely around the world, in publications that include: Landscape Architecture Frontiers, ASLA LAM, Community Design, Urban Flux, Complexity and Sustainability, Frame, Future Magazine, Vision, GSD Platform, Homestyle, and a series of web-magazines like Dezeen, Designboom, Phaidon and Gooood.

Various design projects have been exhibited worldwide in important venues and events such as: 2016 Shanghai “Trans-Design” at West Bund Art Centre (where we also curated the spatial design of the section “Ideas in Action”), 14th Venice Architectural Biennale, 2014 “Making Community, Not the Map Nor the Territory” at Manchester Center for Chinese Contemporary Art, 2013 Festival des Architectures Vives of Montpellier, 2012 Rotterdam Architecture Biennale, 2011 Tallinn Architecture Biennale.

Tags: Beijing, China

Categories: House, Residential

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