Z House, Beijing, China
House, Renovation
2024
2024
Z House, a house for the architect’s parents in rural Beijing, renovates a courtyard house and reframes its vernacular heritage for contemporary routines.
Z House is designed as a retirement home for two elderly residents throughout Spring, Summer and Fall seasons. Within a modest budget, it reinstates life on an abandoned site: major work includes reconstructing the perimeter wall and entry, landscaping, rebuilding the kitchen unit, and renovating the main house - a traditional Chinese timber/cobblestone construction typical in the rural north.
In heavily bent load-bearing beams, one can trace the wisdom of rural construction levering limited resources at hand. To celebrate the “táiliáng” (column-beam-and-strut) system’s structural, rhythmic and material beauty, the renovation maps its inherent logic and follows. After repairing the structural members and replacing the rafters, we’ve prepared the skeleton for a new weather-proof envelope - standing seam metal roof and insulated window cladded like a piece of clothing. Previous 5 structural bays were reworked into 3 rooms, allowing full expression of the timber framing. Steel framing continues to extend outward as flying eaves, forming a shaded veranda to the front, a service corridor to the back. Veneer bricks and stone foundations are restored as needed.
The kitchen is rebuilt in steel framing, with service areas to the back and a glass facade opening onto a concrete platform. The courtyard features a farm garden and patches of landscape gardens, in a dynamic connectivity of circulation routes. A gravel “river” flows over arrangements of rocks, plants, and paved fields, symbolizing greater nature in miniature.
![New/Old Plan]()
Z House is designed as a retirement home for two elderly residents throughout Spring, Summer and Fall seasons. Within a modest budget, it reinstates life on an abandoned site: major work includes reconstructing the perimeter wall and entry, landscaping, rebuilding the kitchen unit, and renovating the main house - a traditional Chinese timber/cobblestone construction typical in the rural north.
In heavily bent load-bearing beams, one can trace the wisdom of rural construction levering limited resources at hand. To celebrate the “táiliáng” (column-beam-and-strut) system’s structural, rhythmic and material beauty, the renovation maps its inherent logic and follows. After repairing the structural members and replacing the rafters, we’ve prepared the skeleton for a new weather-proof envelope - standing seam metal roof and insulated window cladded like a piece of clothing. Previous 5 structural bays were reworked into 3 rooms, allowing full expression of the timber framing. Steel framing continues to extend outward as flying eaves, forming a shaded veranda to the front, a service corridor to the back. Veneer bricks and stone foundations are restored as needed.
The kitchen is rebuilt in steel framing, with service areas to the back and a glass facade opening onto a concrete platform. The courtyard features a farm garden and patches of landscape gardens, in a dynamic connectivity of circulation routes. A gravel “river” flows over arrangements of rocks, plants, and paved fields, symbolizing greater nature in miniature.
Client:
Fujing Zhang/Yaojun Zhang
Location:
Dahuashan Town, Beijing
Area:
390 m² / 4200 sqf
Status:
Completed Oct 2024
Project Architect:
Yiran Zhang
Collaborators:
General Contractor:
Site Manager:
Millwork: Core Lab Beijing
Special Graphic Support:
Yalun Li
Phorography:
Runzi Zhu
Fujing Zhang/Yaojun Zhang
Location:
Dahuashan Town, Beijing
Area:
390 m² / 4200 sqf
Status:
Completed Oct 2024
Project Architect:
Yiran Zhang
Collaborators:
General Contractor:
Site Manager:
Millwork: Core Lab Beijing
Special Graphic Support:
Yalun Li
Phorography:
Runzi Zhu
Set against wooded mountains of Dahuashan village, Z House preserves local heritage through careful renewal: from materiality and rhythm in the construction system, to the organization of domestic programs within the traditional “Courtyard House” type.
Z House follows a principle for renovation: what you see is what you get; what seems coarse, heavy, and thick be old, what seems sleek, light, and lissome be new. The old and the new present themselves as distinct others and thrive in one balanced composite - a dichotomy in equity. For instance, the new envelope and the old brick/cobblestone wall sing a contrasting harmony.
As our clients seek a retirement life in Zen, in kinship with nature and daily cultivation work, Z House innovates the “Courtyard House” type accordingly. “xiǎo yuàn” (Courtyard House), a hard-paved yard enclosed by walls abutting a long house, is widely found in Chinese rural north. We unpack some of the Chinese garden philosophies and poetic ideals of “tián yuán” (fields and gardens) into an updated narrative here: Returning home, one enters through an inflected, concealed entrance to find a panoramic scene of “huā yuán” (landscape garden) and “cài yuán” (farm garden) revealing. Gravitated by the tree, one travels across the gravel “river” to arrive at the shaded veranda - the vein connecting the main house and the kitchen. From farming to cooking, from group gathering to solitary resting, from indoor to open-air…programs are arranged in one organic tissue in space, in one monastic schedule in time.
A 30-meter Ailanthus tree on site forms a “center of empathetic gravity”: to its north, a long house; to its south, an enclosed yard. The proposal is essentially a planimetric recalibration, tying together points and fields, movements and stillness, panoramic and framed views…a play of rhythm where layers of time, layers of domestic picturesque unfold.
![Landscape Plan]()
Z House follows a principle for renovation: what you see is what you get; what seems coarse, heavy, and thick be old, what seems sleek, light, and lissome be new. The old and the new present themselves as distinct others and thrive in one balanced composite - a dichotomy in equity. For instance, the new envelope and the old brick/cobblestone wall sing a contrasting harmony.
As our clients seek a retirement life in Zen, in kinship with nature and daily cultivation work, Z House innovates the “Courtyard House” type accordingly. “xiǎo yuàn” (Courtyard House), a hard-paved yard enclosed by walls abutting a long house, is widely found in Chinese rural north. We unpack some of the Chinese garden philosophies and poetic ideals of “tián yuán” (fields and gardens) into an updated narrative here: Returning home, one enters through an inflected, concealed entrance to find a panoramic scene of “huā yuán” (landscape garden) and “cài yuán” (farm garden) revealing. Gravitated by the tree, one travels across the gravel “river” to arrive at the shaded veranda - the vein connecting the main house and the kitchen. From farming to cooking, from group gathering to solitary resting, from indoor to open-air…programs are arranged in one organic tissue in space, in one monastic schedule in time.
A 30-meter Ailanthus tree on site forms a “center of empathetic gravity”: to its north, a long house; to its south, an enclosed yard. The proposal is essentially a planimetric recalibration, tying together points and fields, movements and stillness, panoramic and framed views…a play of rhythm where layers of time, layers of domestic picturesque unfold.
