Garden Remodeling

"Garden Street" in Harbin was the residential block built by tsarist Russia in the 1900s when they colonized northern China. The block was designed under Ebenizer Howard's idea of "Garden City". Now it becomes a special block in the center of Harbin as a historic memory but in a poor condition. My design aims to remodel the site.

There are 4 blocks in the area. The first step for our group is to come up with an overall urban design strategy for the 4 blocks. The second is to do an architecture design for each block respectively by each group member. At the urban design strategy we use FAR-balance idea to deal with 4 blocks. We put most FAR pressure on one block surrounded by tall buildings separated with other three blocks. Then I choose one part to do my architecture design. For my block, I make full use of elevation difference of the land. The north part is 11 meters higher than the south part as a slope. I use the slope to get light into the underground part in my design. And I also do some connections between old house and the new part. The warming system and insulation system are important to old houses, so I retain them and extend the roof system and wall system. There are also lots of old trees in the site. In order to protect them, I decide to make some holes for them. In order to make the structure integrated, I use kangaroo to find the shape of a vault. It works like rhino-vault designed by Phillip Block in ETH. So that the roof of underground part serves as a landscape garden. I therefore protect the sense of "Garden City".