The City Under a Single Roof
Beijing, China
Investigation
The City Under One Roof project is located in Beijing, a city in constant change and urban growth. The concept is based on the transformation of the traditional Chinese courtyard typology or Siheyuan (四合院). A dominant typology in many cultures around the world (the Andalusian courtyard, the Arab courtyard among others) and the need for its transformation to accommodate the new urban programmatic demands of the contemporary, hyper-expansive city.
For this, the project proposes to combine the typology of the traditional Chinese courtyard with the typology of the slab tower, two typologies that dominate the urban landscape of Beijing, transforming them and thus creating a new dominant urban typology.
The premise of the project then is the transformation of architecture as an urban artifact to promote the cultural change from an enclosed and private city to an open and public city. The courtyard is transformed as it expands. This increases the internal area and transforms it from a private and exclusive program into a recreational public space. The lateral sides can then be widened for the conformation of commercial urban podiums and bases that support a series of thin towers that look over the conformed urban spaces.