Project name: Carrying pole House
Design firm: Atelier KAI architects
Lead Architects: Xie Kai , Han Ye
Location: MAO ER Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing
Photo: XING RUI
Year: 2024
Project description from design firms Atelier KAI architects
‘Renovation’ or ‘new construction’?
The house is located in Mao’er Hutong, Beijing. Currently, it is a five bay bar shaped house with sloping roofs on the north and south sides, as well as a narrow courtyard of the same length but just over 3 meters wide.
Placing a box element brings three new spaces: sunken space, large space, and roof space.
From the perspective of functionality and benefits, it has expanded the richness of the original room’s functions and usage, bringing practical benefits and benefits.
From the perspective of spatial perception, the original single spatial experience has been transformed into three spatial experiences, which are respectively related to the original place: the dialogue relationship between the sunken space and the original courtyard; The dialogue relationship between the large space and the original wooden frame; The dialogue relationship between the roof space and the original roof. At the same time, they are integrated into a whole and interconnected without being separated.
Transforming the original narrow strip space into a square space to create a flexible large space, endowing it with functionality and streamline, suitable for living, exhibition, and work. Be the first strategy to address the above issues.
Three-dimensional courtyard
By leveraging the sloping roof of the neighboring house and combining it with the newly built semi elevated platform, it is even possible to reconstruct a landscape that stretches gently towards the sky. The courtyard is immersed in the sky, and the two sloping roofs serve as channels for the scenery to flow into the house; The semi sunken floor borrows space from the ground, and looking at the mottled walls facing it, one can get a quiet and touching private scenery.
By sinking and lifting to create a staggered three-dimensional space and flow, the light and scenery inside and outside the room can be transformed into multiple multidimensional relationships that are both large and small. This is strategy two aimed at addressing the above issues.
The TYPOLOGY of the structure?
The large steel truss with a self weight of only 1.9 tons is a type that is fundamentally detached from the wooden roof truss system; Its relationship with the ground is minimal. But it has indeed formed a enclosure, limiting a space that is both enclosed and floating. Even in the future, the original appearance can be restored after demolition. One end of it is anchored by a pull rod, and the other end is cantilevered towards the opposite side with the middle column as the fulcrum, supporting a floor slab of about 6 tons, forming a “pole truss”.
Placing it in a small space of several tens of square meters, the sense of scale begins to wander. The tension between the small space and the large truss, coupled with the material tension between the new steel structure and the old wooden structure, will restore familiar things to unfamiliarity. At the same time, the old and new order begins to reconcile equally. New spatial experiences emerge with the emergence of new spatial styles. Strategy 3: Make the structure the protagonist of the space. The new suspended steel structure system and the old wooden structure system are structurally detached, both explicit and implicit in meaning.
Zero degree warmth
The newly introduced materials use natural metal, semi transparent polycarbonate hard plastic, and plastering mortar. They acquire physical properties from each other in a wooden system with temperature. Before the renovation, the interior and exterior of the bamboo pole house could be seen through at a glance. It can be imagined that daily life is also dull; After renovation, this familiar yet unfamiliar feeling may lead to the construction of a subjectively abstract but realistic house.
