Xizhimen Port: A Lunar Eclipse Inspired Apartment

Architect Zhe Wang's Innovative Approach to Urban Renewal

Designed as a series of aluminum window frames projecting out from the exterior wall, the facade of Xizhimen Port is a vivid urban sculpture. The scale of the window frames increases at the building corner, as if the entire building were twisting on the square. The design organizes the variously spaced exposed beams and columns on the original facade while providing housing for each room’s AC unit. The inside of the window sleeve changes from orange at the top to pale yellow at the bottom, like the color spectrum of the lunar eclipse, and also celebrating Beijing's golden autumn.

The architect made different adjustments to each floor, adding windows on the east and west side wall at typical floors. This not only presents a more active urban facade but also increases daylighting for each floor by 50%. It provides flexible and private spaces for young tenants within a limited building area. The core of the room unit layout is to provide customers with a safe and comfortable room space under the premise of limited space.

The development of the Xizhimen Port Apartments was driven by the challenge of balancing the existing structural conditions of the 10-story building constructed in the 1980s with bold architectural expression, current building technologies, and efficient design. The original building has a large number of reinforced beams and columns exposed on the facade with variant spacing; also the renovated facade needs to find space for the AC unit of each room. So the architect designed an aluminum window frame projecting out from the exterior wall. The abundant aluminum window covers are like a horizontal combination of "Pandora's Boxes", using rhythmic changes to meet the objective functional requirements of the building.

This building carries many common memories of the "same song" KTV, which is also one of its old identities. The outdated image, depressed tonality, and precipitated vicissitudes of this existing building are no longer in line with these young people who are trying to be innovative in the new era. Upgrading the appearance of the old buildings, reshaping the image of the city, stimulating the vitality of the community, and also providing urban young people with a warm home with a story and a dream, become a new topic faced by this project.

The Xizhimen Port Apartment is an exploration, hoping to gradually practice another way of urban renewal in addition to the point type experimental project and the surface type "large-scale demolition and construction". This Design was awarded Silver in A' Architecture, Building and Structure Design Award in 2022. Silver A' Design Award : Rewarded to top-of-the-line, creative, and professionally remarkable designs that illustrate outstanding expertise and innovation. These designs, admired for their strong technical characteristics and splendid artistic skill, showcase a remarkable level of excellence and introduce positive feelings, amazement, and wonder.