Looking for Peonies in Garden

The project won the first Prize in the 2020 Beijing "Small Space, Big Life - Excellent Design of Microspace Transformation around People".

Design Description

The Mudanyuan community is located in a dense urban residential area, surrounded by five communities. The red line of the site is located between buildings 1 and 2 of Mudanyuan Beili, with an area of about 4,290 square meters. The community was built in the 1990s. The contradiction of motor vehicle parking in the community has led to a serious squeeze on the community public space and public environment, no space for community services and community governance, dangers for residents' safety, community space has seriously failed to meet the requirements of residents' modern life, and social conflicts are increasingly intensified due to the competition for space.

Design strategies.

1、Solve the parking dilemma and give the public space back to the people.

The core problem of motor vehicles is solved by a variety of means, such as underground parking, and parking on auxiliary roads. It can meet the parking demand of 80% of the residents in the community with one car per household.

2、De-clutter the community traffic and ensure the safety of residents.

The renovation and restoration of the circular fire lane between the 1st and 2nd floors, and the opening of the fire lane connection with the Dujing Yuan community on the north side, provide the possibility for the gradual integration of the community in the future. The establishment of a pedestrian bridge system.

Using the original inter-community wall, a one-column overhead pedestrian bridge was set up on the principle of no additional construction and no disturbance to the people, linking the communities by commercial services of Xiao Guanxi backstreet in the north-south direction and relieving the inconvenience caused by the isolation of each community. It serves the whole Mudangyuan community. Creating a sense of stability for the community public space and creating a community space where people can stay. Use the boundary of the community group partition to establish a corridor bridge while providing the available gray space area.

3、Rebuild the community garden system and return the green homes to the residents.

The design of the community garden system consists of a central garden under the forest with concentrated greenery on the ground, a sunken terrace garden between the buildings, a linear garden with interconnected perimeters, and a three-dimensional greening made by the enclosure walls which separate the communities to form a three-dimensional greening level, providing residents with a rich and diverse space for activities and stays.

4、Activate vacant space, serve the community and make the use of the existing property.

The design of the sunken courtyard activates the underground space for the residence, at the same time, it provides a sunken courtyard garden resting space with unique place memory. Change the location of the distribution room by using the height difference, thus the ground building is eliminated to form a continuous full garden system. It provides diversified stay space to store residents' leisure activities; it is equipped with various compound planting to form a community leisure green garden with comfortable scale, quiet and completeness.

5、Injecting community culture and establishing community identity.

Artistic peony patterns are used as ground decoration throughout the sunken garden and the central garden to strengthen the memory of the place and the sense of community self-identification.

The cultural wall, ground and steps throughout the garden represent the concept of sustainable living, spiritual dialogue and other humanistic connotations. It systematically establishes the community residents' identity and interaction with their own home.

Project Facts

Location：Beijing

Land Area：4290 ㎡

Designed Area：10985 ㎡

Designed: 2020

Completed: 2020

Competition Organizer: Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources

Architect：Dong Mei, Wang Xiaoqi