UAD Campus in ZITOWN

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Main entrance. Image © Qiang Zhao

UAD CAMPUS IN ZITOWN

UAD

ARCHITECTS
UAD

PHOTOGRAPHS
Qiang Zhao

CATAGORY
Offices

MANUFACTURERS
Shanghai Yaohua Pilkington Glass Group

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
Yuping Wang, Bin Lei, Hanxuan Mao

GENERAL CONTRACTOR
Zhejiang Construction Engineering Group Co. Ltd.

CURTAIN WALL DESIGN
Chun Xiang

SUBCONTRACTOR
GBS

DESIGN TEAM LEADER
Danshen Dong, Nong Yin

ENGINEERING
Zhibin Xiao, Zhoujin Mo

CONSTRUCTION FIRM
Hangzhou Zijin Zhunqian Technology Development Co. Ltd.

LOCATION
Hang Zhou , China

STRUCTURAL DESIGN
Zhibin Xiao, Zhenfen Jin,shaohua Li

WATER SUPPLY & DRAINAGE DESIGN TEAM
Jinghua Wang, Yuran Shao

ELECTRICAL DESIGN TEAM
Xuhui Wu, Songjie Xu

HVAC DESIGN
Dahong Pan, Kai Yi

INTERIOR DESIGN
Ran Chu, Wenbin Mei

LOW VOLTAGE ELECTRICAL DESIGN
Jia Chen, Jian Ma

LANDSCAPE DESIGN
Dongming Sun, Xuantan Lou

CLIENT
The Architectural Design & Research Institute Of Zhejiang University Co., Ltd. (Uad)

EPC TEAM
Jiawei Zhou, Quanbiao Xu, Haijun Chen, Chaojun Fang

AREA
8888 m²

YEAR
2020

Text description provided by architect.

As China continuously promotes the industrialization of architecture, an unconventional rapid construction mode based on the prefabricated system has gradually become mainstream in the market.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
UAD Campus in ZITOWN. Image © Qiang Zhao
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Facade detail. Image © Qiang Zhao

Is industrialized construction a synonym of "roughness" and "low quality"? And how should it express the poetry of architecture? The project is an office building (Building B1) of the Architectural Design & Research Institute of Zhejiang University Co., Ltd. (UAD).

It's located in ZITOWN, a base of R&D company headquarters jointly developed by the government of Xihu District in Hangzhou and Zhejiang University. As one of the demonstrative prefabricated architecture projects selected by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of China in 2019, the prefabricated rate and assembly rate of this building are respectively up to 85% and 96.8%.

In addition, it's rated as a national Class-3A prefabricated building and a three-star green building. At the beginning of the design, we put forward the idea of making use of technology to serve rather than dominate the design. We adopted a holistic approach that involved systematic integration and multi-disciplinary collaboration, to create a venue filled with human care.

The design emphasizes the poetry of industrialized construction, aiming to break the stereotype of general prefabricated buildings as rough, crude, and cool.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Perforated aluminum panels. Image © Qiang Zhao
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Leisure platform on east side. Image © Qiang Zhao

The poetry of architecture is embodied in its subtle integration with life and the site and is in essence the care for people. Prefabricated architecture is a product of the times, and is closely related to time, location and people. It transforms with time, while the core essence remains unchanged.

In the process of pursuing technical progress, technology-oriented architecture tends to be purely rational and pursue precision. This indeed can help improve efficiency and economic aspects but neglects the connection with the local context and people.

The balance of architecture would be broken whether the design is biased towards technology or humanity. Social development greatly relies on the progress of technology, while poetry is indispensable to people's life.

Therefore, architects need to balance technology and poetry in architectural design and translate "poetry" into a language that is visible and understandable to the public.

I. SPATIAL ORDER CREATES ARCHITECTURAL POETRY.

The building B1 is formed by three interpenetrating cubes, among which the north and south volumes are large-width offices, while the central volume is a full-height atrium.

The facades of both office volumes adopt similar modular UPHC cladding panels. Those panels are in two different colors and are either concave or convex on the two sides, hence forming 4 different modular units.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Facade detail. Image © Qiang Zhao
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
2F atrium with a living wall. Image © Qiang Zhao

The various combinations of those modular panels produce slightly curved shadows under the sunlight and also generate a rational yet rhythmic facade image.

Through the reflection of the entrance waterscape, the whole building is not bound to a fixed industrial park setting.

A path leads people to pass through the waterscape and then enter the building.

The steel structures make the prefabricated architectural space more flexible, and the overall space is connected by a triple-height lobby.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
© Qiang Zhao
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Play of light and shadows in a bamboo fores. Image © Qiang Zhao

People can communicate on the big steps of the main hall, take a rest in the UAD Cafe, stroll through the side hall to appreciate regularly updated architectural exhibitions, or stand in front of the prefabricated greenery wall and look up to the sky through the photovoltaic glass skylight. Those open public spaces form a fluid circulate route, which helps eliminate the boundaries of different areas.

The entire building is like a three-dimensional garden that offers multiple choices of vertical traffic to access the workspace on the south and north sides, which creates joyful walking experiences.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Entrance lobby. Image © Qiang Zhao

The interior space is mainly finished with white coatings to achieve a bright environment, and it's conceived in a minimalist style with little decoration to seek visual coherence.

The prefabricated structural columns, beams, and floor minimize the volume of cast-in-place concrete. This is a new construction mode that combines technology with art and encourages a new work approach.

Castellated beams are employed as main beams, and major pipelines pass through them in an orderly manner, hence preserving the net height of the interior space to the maximum extent and adding a technological aesthetic to the exposed ceiling.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
© Qiang Zhao

II. PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE EVOKES ARCHITECTURAL POETRY.

Time is a prerequisite of spatial diversity, and people’s perceptual experience in architectural space is not fragmented but a convergence of energy.

Therefore, based on an overall spatial narrative that takes time as the thread, each space is conceived in a more specific manner, which affects people’s direct impression of the building.

Elements, materials, and even forms in the space directly determine what kind of atmosphere the building is about to generate.

The central cubic volume of building B1 functions as a full-height entrance lobby. It is not only the intersection of pedestrian circulations but also an iconic visual highlight of the whole building.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Large stepped public area. Image © Qiang Zhao
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Display of prefabricated pipework system. Image © Qiang Zhao

Serving as a resting area for the staff, a reception area, and a place for hosting relevant exhibitions and forums from time to time, this multifunctional space is the most important part of the whole design.

The introduction of daylight has often been considered the soul of architectural space.

In this project, we created a poetic scene of “Play of light and shadows in a bamboo forest” after navigating technological difficulties, in a bid to inject poetry into the prefabricated architecture.

To realize that, we first pixilated a photo of a real bamboo forest on the computer to gain vector data, and then resorted to parametric tools to convert the textures of the bamboo forest to the building's surface.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
© Qiang Zhao
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
© Qiang Zhao

Moreover, construction robots were leveraged to ensure the varied angles of the aluminum panels' perforations, so as to control the effect of the filtered daylight and create a poetic view of "A towering bamboo forest filled with mottled light and shadows".

At dusk, it provides people with a poetic experience of "watching the sunset in the shadows of bamboo", adding varying visual effects and a tranquil ambiance to the space.

III. LANDSCAPE DESIGN ENHANCES ARCHITECTURAL POETRY.

Another outstanding feature of the project is the fusion of architecture and landscape, and how they co-exist in the same built environment.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
© Qiang Zhao
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Courtesy of UAD 9+studio

The building and the landscape are connected in composition. Waterscape is set at the main entrance on the west side, to show a sense of rituality. In addition, a rest platform formed by volcanic stones and prefabricated concrete boards sits on the east side.

Other landscape elements such as bamboo groves and flower pathways greatly enrich the spatial layering of the roads and secondary entrances. Complemented by the indoor cafe and lobby lounge, a dialogue between indoor and outdoor resting spaces is created.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
© Qiang Zhao
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Pipelines pass through beams. Image Courtesy of UAD 9+studio

The rooftop farm is another distinctive landscape design of the project, allowing the staff to enjoy laid-back life after work. The prefabricated rooftop farm is equipped with an automatic irrigation system and adopts a lightweight organic soilless culture technique to grow plants in boxes made of environmentally friendly plastic.

These modules can be spliced together into different shapes to cater to different formal requirements of the landscape. The rooftop farm can be divided into several parts, and any employees who are of interest can grow their favorite fruits and vegetables in their spare time.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Courtesy of UAD 9+studio
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Perforated aluminum panel. Image © Qiang Zhao

IV. EPILOGUE.

For this project, the balance among technology, art, and nature is the key to the design. It gives an interpretation of poetic construction: architectural design is no longer about purely rational thinking or perceptual output, and any technical decision or creation of perceptual experience is based on both sense and sensibility.

Rational construction is not constrained by technology but instead, it emphasizes the poetry of industrialization. It breaks the preconception that the public had about prefabricated architecture as rough, crude, and cool.

UAD Campus in ZITOWN
UAD Campus in ZITOWN. Image © Qiang Zhao


UAD Campus in ZITOWN
1F plan. Image Courtesy of UAD 9+studio
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
2F plan. Image Courtesy of UAD 9+studio
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
3F plan. Image Courtesy of UAD 9+studio


UAD Campus in ZITOWN
UHPC cladding panel. Image Courtesy of UAD 9+studio
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Modeling and further processing. Image Courtesy of UAD 9+studio
UAD Campus in ZITOWN
Functional explosive diagram. Image Courtesy of UAD 9+studio