Linked Hybrid Steven Holl architects Location: Beijing, China
Completion: 2009
Fig. H 2 sample house plans in Linked Hybrid with cross ventilation shown
Fig. F Green Roof and Pond at the centre
Fig. G Artificial landscape in Linked Hybrid
Manipulation of Urban Space
Fig. A Perspective view of Linked Hybrid
Introduction
Fig. E Diagram showing Ground Loop and Sky Loop
Since the design of Linked Hybrid which dated back to 2003, Steven Holl Architects have had unique visionary and concepts towards collective housing in China. Instead of constructing 8 individual residential towers that discourage social interaction and promote isolation, the architects have strong and firm ideas of turning the large scale housing project into part of Beijing’s urban design.1 There are a number of successful and important architectural knowledge and innovation that contributed to the industry and society. The main purpose of the article is to explore these significances.
There are 5 artificial mounds contained within Linked Hybrid, bringing and linking the residents and visitors to the nature even though the site is located close to the metropolitan Beijing city centre. The architectural concept of Urban Oasis is thus being successfully implanted.11 More importantly the mounds are constructed with the excavated earth on site – which accord with the idea of nature and sustainability.12 The architects also named the mounds in relation to the 5 stages of a human’s life – Mound of childhood, Adolescence, Middle Age, Old Age and Infinity. Each of them corresponds to a related program respectively. With the oasis designed, the next job for the architects is to activate the site – not only within the residents but also for visitors. This naturally leads the architects to introduce attractive public programs and environment for the ground entry level, such as theatre and cinemas complex, situated amongst a soothing pond and grassy landscape.13 Up above 10 more levels, the architects introduced even richer programs for residents and passerby to freely circulate and activate the site in multiple dimension. This architectural idea is an oppose to most of the typical high rise residential buildings found in Beijing, which only focus on isolating themselves from the street level to maintain a high degree of privacy.14
Linked Hybrid
Linked Hybrid’s maximised openness aims at creating intertwine with residents as well as visitors.15 From ground level through to the skybridges. The architects have successfully manipulated the urban space in different altitude. Sustainability Aspect
Fig. E Sky Loop program details
Programme:
Central Beijing Fig. B Location Map of Linked Hybrid
Fig. C,D Typical Housing in Beijing
Background and Site Linked Hybrid is situated adjacent to the site of old city wall in Beijing, at the corner between the North 2nd Ring Road and the East 2nd Ring Road (Beijing has 6 in total). The project is located almost at Beijing town centre, with only 15 minutes walk to the nearest subway station. During the 1950s and 60s, the district was used for industrial zone.2 So developer Modern Green does not have to demolish any existing houses but merely a factory on the site for this housing development.3 Steven Holl has made a comment specifically that he would not have taken the project at all if there were any old and existing houses that would get knocked down due to new development. As this is against both cultural heritage and humanity to forcibly taking local citizens’ properties for new development (which is common in China).4 Due to Holl’s idea and intention of respecting local culture and thinking5, the architect collaborated closely with his Chinese partner Li Hu since the early conceptual stage. This resulted in a project that is rich in the sense of context awareness. This will be discussed further down the article. During the design phase, the architects aim at conquering against Beijing’s current development trend, which is mostly about objectbased free standing towers and un-sustainability (Fig. B,C). Linked Hybrid has been focusing on urban scaled green design right from the beginning: aiming at creating a porous open space for citizens with sustainable facilities.6
Project architects Steven Holl and Li Hu has constantly stressed on NOT designing a walled residential collectives.7 Instead, they advocated openness: “Open city within a city” is the theme named by the architects.8 The aim of the design is about the opened and welcomed urban nature but not merely individually confined housing towers. This concept evokes a conflict between the developers and the architects. On one hand the developers like the urban concept which will help promoting the use of space and attracting attention, but on the other side they also emphasized that the site must be fenced off with gates opening for security reason. With the dilemma the architects have proposed a hybrid of social and commercial programs added on top of the primary residential use.9 In that way there will no longer be ways to fence off the site due to visitors, albeit the gates are still to be erected around the premise. The programs are organised in 2 loops at different height. The ground loop serves as the major entrance for residence and visitors. It consists of a hotel, a school, a restaurant, a theatre library and also a kindergarten. Most are scattered around the bottom level of each tower and artificial landscape, leaving an open space in the middle of the site. The open area is then used for green space and pool for hangout and gathering. The second loop is raised up high between the 12th and 18th floor, thus the name ‘sky loop’.10 This is the area where the linkage between the towers is enforced via a total of 8 skybridges, each activated with a specific program. They serve the purpose of creating physical interaction as well as providing a platform for social interaction. Please refer to Fig. F for program details. The 2 loops formed a ‘city’ at the site. The richness of programs does not only help drawing visitors but also forms a self-contained and sustained community for the residents of the apartments. The architectural idea of urban and city thus successfully turns into bringing benefits and convenience to the users and inhabitants on the site.
Linked Hybrid is conceived as an “open city within a city”. It encourages the sharing of space and facilities between the residents and pedestrians. Under this intention, the idea of sustainability is naturally born. It is firstly supported by the remodelling of landscape with several artificial moulds constructed with on-site excavated soil. (Refer to previous section for more details) Secondly, the water used inside Linked Hybrid is recycled. Greywater from apartments, which refers to the water that is used for bathing, laundry and dishwashing, is cleansed with UV light and then stored in the large pond at the centre of the site (Fig. F). It is later used for watering the landscape and green roof. 660 geothermal wells, each 100m in depth below the foundation, have been implanted at Linked Hybrid.16 This makes the design one of the largest sustainable projects in Beijing. One of the most innovative architectural implementation of the project is the huge amount of apartments that the geothermal heat pump system is capable to support – a total of 750 flats. Moreover, if the heat pump system is to be installed as separate machines on the ground, then a large amount of green space will have to be sacrificed and not to mention the noise pollution resulted. As a matter of such, hiding services underground where appropriate will certainly bring benefits to both the environment and end users. Within the apartments, the low-e coated glasses favoured solar gain and heat control.17 This in turns reduced the demand for indoor cooling. The apartments also feature another system called displacement ventilation.18 Air that is below the desired temperature will be released from the ground. The cooler air will keep on displacing the warmer air, resulting in a constant refreshing of air within the environment.
Architectonics The residential towers in Linked Hybrid utilized a skeletal frame structure.19 This granted the apartments with maximum flexibility for its interior space as the walls now act as panels that can be freely configured. Hundreds of different apartment layouts in a huge variety of types is then available as options. This architectural feature is uncommon in China due to the fact that mass housing has always been very standardized and repetitive historically. Being flexible in layout is more humanized as the ideal case for every inhabitant should be different as each will have a different demand for housing.
Another visual highlight of the project is the use of bright and sharp colour at certain highlight areas. It is easy for visitors to recall Holl’s MIT Simmons Hall project with the similarity of the palette used. In Linked Hybrid the colour is seen on the lower surface of the skybridges and on some of the window frames of the towers. This introduces a polychromy effect which traditional architecture used to achieve via the use of different material. The use and selection of tinting is not random or accidental at all. In fact this brings back the idea of respecting local Chinese culture and belief. The choice of colour was inspired by Buddhist temples, together with the ‘random principle’ derived from the respected book named I-Ching (known as Book of Changes).20 This becomes a fine example of fusing western architecture forms into local Chinese traditional belief and knowledge. The outcome is neither a mere copy from any sides but an intelligently and uniquely crafted architecture. Nowadays with many foreign architects coming from all over the world to China for the development, such design methodology which embraces the knowledge from different parts of the world could help yielding buildings that are rich in both meaning and thinking. Conclusion Steven Holl and his partner Li Hu have taken advantages of the large project scale and successfully implanted several significant architectural knowledge within it. Firstly it is about activating and sharing the built environment with both the residents and visitors. This is done and promoted via the detailed and carefully planned program loops in different dimmension. Artificial green space is also another factor that may help pulling Beijing citizens towards the oasis. Isolation is what the architects tried to discard and conquered. With Linked Hybrid, the architects advocated the idea of shared open space. This is a significant idea especially in high density area like Beijing where resources are precious and limited. Moreover, the co-operation of architects from both the Western and local architects yielded an intelligently crafted architectural outcome. In Linked Hybrid there are quite a number of local traditional elements injected in the apartment design. These elements will gain wider appreciation and acceptance amongst local citizens. Lastly the sustainability design in the project played an important role to further support the architects proposed notion of ‘sharing’ of resources. These architectural innovation adds together to make this collective housing a successful project. (1750 words)
Endnotes 1 Steven Holl Architects: Linked Hybrid, Beijing, 2003-08. (2010). Lotus international,141, 64-71. 2 ibid 3 Steven Holl: Linked Hybrid, Beijing, China. (2008). GA document,106, 42-55. 4 Linked hybrid - East Xiba River Road, Beijing, China, 2008: Steven Holl Architects.. (2008). A + t,31, 20-29. 5 ibid 6 Webb, M. (2008). Made in China: as a great nation modernises with terrifying rapidity, architecture is caught in the slipstream. Architectural review, 224(1337), 34-37. 7 ibid 8 ibid 9 Minutillo, J. (2009). Getting the lay of the land: with several projects nearing completion, Steven Holl Architects spreads out across the Chinese landscape. Architectural record, 198(1), 138-142,144-145. 10 ibid
ibid Yang, A. (2008). Linking big. Wallpaper, 110, 34-37. 13 Melvin, J. (2006). Dynamic hybrid: Linked Hybrid, Beijing, China. Architectural review, 224(1340), 50-53. 14 ibid 15 Capezzuto, R. (2004). Steven Holl: otto torri e un anello volante = Eight towers and a flying ring. Domus, 876, 92-101. 16 Bossi, L. (2007). Il teorema di Holl = Holl’s theorem. Domus, 900, 12-17. 17 Ho, C. (2008). Steven Holl Architects. Blueprint (London, England), 255, 44-49. 18 Holl, S., & Jefferson, E. (2005). Holl on hybrids [interview]. Architectural design, 75(5), 78-83. 19 ibid 20 Webb, M. (2008). Made in China: as a great nation modernises with terrifying rapidity, architecture is caught in the slipstream. Architectural review, 224(1337), 34-37. 11 12
Illustration Credit Fig. A http://top-10-list.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Linked-Hybrid.jpg Fig. B http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5117/7162955830_13e7574b67_z.jpg Fig. C http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-03/18/content_544116.htm Fig. D http://www.digitaltoolsforarchitects.com/category/exercises/exercise-5-1/ Fig. E http://www.archdaily.com/34302/linked-hybrid-steven-holl-architects/gf-plan-layout1-1/ Fig. F http://www.archdaily.com/34302/linked-hybrid-steven-holl-architects/program_plan-converted/ Fig. G http://www.thecoolist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/linked-hybrid-building_beijing_1.jpg Fig. H http://www.archdaily.com/34302/linked-hybrid-steven-holl-architects/pp154_beij_apartmentviews_ wotext/
Chow Chi Ho (Jeffrey)
