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Affordable Housing

2020 WAN Awards entry: Song-Zhang-Kou New Rural Housing - Bluetown Architects

Song-Zhang-Kou New Rural Housing by Bluetown Architects is an entry in the Affordable Housing Category of the 2020 WAN Awards

by Copy taken from 2020 entry 18 June 2020 2020

Song-Zhang-Kou community was merged by 3 former villages which were aggravated hollowed in the rapid rural-urban transformation background. This Housing Project is aiming to address two major issues of the current rural community in China: preserve the collective lifestyle for a large elderly population and keep a minimal budget for improvement.

To meet the future tenants’ special needs, our design team started with living locally and immersed in their daily life. Then embed their demands including large storage needs, later life habits, bonded neighborhood interaction etc. into the integrated design. Thus, in the final construction outcome, housing orientation follows organic village context. Cluster house grouping creates various village cores to give possibilities for traditional street life. Individual courtyard acts as enclosed space for veggie garden and sun-cure habit, forms a pleasant living experience within family.

Housing style refined from traditional Northern Jiangsu Architecture. However, the greatest challenge is meeting required construction cost, £220/sqm, while achieving our aesthetic design purpose. After considerable value engineering, traditional details get simplified; complicated décor replaced by contrast color-coated module; the beauty of hipped and gable roofing outline remained but type of roof tiles are standardized; door & window proportion recalculated; solar panels kept to replace using tradition firewood stove, and so forth.

‘All aspects in Architecture Design matter’. We are proud to present this practice as it not only provides over 600 tenants an affordable and pleasant new home, but also considers improving the rural residents’ well-being as well as the new rural community’s outlook.

All the information about how to enter the 2020 WAN Awards is here.  

We are very happy to offer support so please don’t hesitate to email Georgia, WAN Awards Event Coordinator with any questions at [email protected].  

Last year more than 40 countries took part in the WAN Awards with strong showings from Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. And we saw some truly outstanding projects, take a look at the winners from last year here.

Bluetown Architects
China

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