hipercroquis

http://www.greenpix.org

GreenPix is a groundbreaking project applying sustainable and digital media technology to the curtain wall of Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, near the site of the 2008 Olympic Games. Featuring the largest color LED display worldwide (back in 2008) and the first photovoltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall in China, the building performs as a self-sufficient organic system, harvesting solar energy by day and using it to illuminate the screen after dark, mirroring a day’s climatic cycle.

The Media Wall provided the city of Beijing with its first venue dedicated to digital media art, while offered the most radical example of sustainable technology applied to an entire building’s envelope to date. The building opened to the public on June 24, 2008, with a specially commissioned program of video installations and live performances by artists from China, Europe and the US.

The display requires zero external energy, as the facade harvests solar energy by day & uses it to illuminate the screen after dark. the display comprises of 2,292 color (RGB) LED’s light points comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. (2.200 m2) monitor screen for dynamic content display.The polycrystalline photovoltaic cells are laminated within the glass of the curtain wall & placed with changing density on the entire building’s skin. the density pattern increases building’s performance, allowing natural light when required by interior program, while reducing heat gain & transforming excessive solar radiation into energy for the media wall.

You can play with the online simulator.

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Hutong Bubble is nominated for Design of the Year 2010.

On January 18th 2010, The Design Museum  in London have announced the shortlist for the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2010. MAD’s latest finished project Hutong Bubble 32 is nomiated for the Brit Insurance Architecture Award.

[via MAD Ltd]

Year 2009
Location Beijing, China
Typology Courtyard Renovation
Building Area 130 sqm
Status Complete

MAD’s proposal for the future Beijing 2050 was first revealed at its exhibition MAD IN CHINA in Venice during the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. Beijing 2050 imagined three scenarios for the future of Beijing—a green public park in Tiananmen Square, a series of floating islands above the city’s CBD, and the “Future of Hutongs”, which featured metallic bubbles scattered over Beijing’s oldest neighborhoods. Three years later, the first hutong bubble has appeared in a small courtyard in Beijing.

China’s rapid development has altered the city’s landscape on a massive scale, continually eroding the delicate urban tissue of old Beijing. Such dramatic changes have forced an aging architecture to rely on chaotic, spontaneous renovations to survive the ever-changing neighborhood. In addition, poor standards of hygiene have turned unique living space and potential thriving communities into a serious urban problem. Hutongs are gradually becoming the local inhabitants’dumpster, the haven for the wealthy, the theme park for tourists.

Beijing 2050_The People’s Square

Beijing 2050_Future of Hutongs

Metallic bubbles scattered over Beijing’s oldest neighborhoods

The self-perpetuating degradation of the city’s urban tissue requires a change in the living conditions of local residents. Progress does not necessarily call for large scale construction—it can occur as interventions at a small scale. The hutong bubbles, inserted into the urban fabric, function like magnets, attracting new people, activities, and resources to reactivate entire neighborhoods. They exist in symbiosis with the old housing.  Fueled by the energy they helped to renew, the bubbles multiply and morph to provide for the community’s various needs, thereby allowing local residents to continue living in these old neighborhoods. In time, these interventions will become part of Beijing’s long history, newly formed membranes within the city’s urban tissue.

Unexpectedly, a manifestation of this idealistic vision has sprung up in one of Beijing’s hutongs, just three years after the exhibition. Hutong Bubble 32 provides a toilet and a staircase that extends onto a roof terrace for a newly renovated courtyard house.  Its shiny exterior renders it an alien creature, and yet at the same time, reflects the surrounding wood, brick, and greenery. The past and the future can thus coexist in a finite, yet dream-like world. (more…)