Baiziwan Social Housing

Situated near the CBD (central business district) in Beijing, MAD's first completed affordable housing project covers the area of 93,900 square meters, with a total construction area of 473,300 square meters. The scheme is comprised of 12 residential buildings collectively providing 4000 households. MAD saw the project as an opportunity to improve the living conditions of low-income communities and introduce a fresh perspective to the current dull residential design image in China.

Open Neighborhood
MAD divided the plot into six blocks, anchored by a main avenue cutting through the center of the site. The large site is fragmented into a much smaller human scale. At street level, the scheme’s central avenue is home to a range of commercial and convenience spaces. The arterial route through the center of the scheme fosters connections between the neighborhood and city.

Floating Garden
While the ground level opens the site to a wider urban audience, the second level, only access to the residents, offers a communal outdoor landscape for residents. A pedestrian circuit weaves around all six blocks, forming a large above-ground park with a variety of communal functions and communal support services.

In addition to the main residents’ park on the second floor, MAD’s scheme incorporates staggered half-floors and semi-opened gray spaces of various scales throughout the design, and strives to provide green coverage on ground level, the second-level park, and rooftop, ensuring residents enjoy a holistic setting with strong connections to nature and the outdoors.

General Topography
These Y-shaped footprints combine with gradual stepping forms and staggered heights fabricates an overall “mountain” topography across the site. The interface between buildings form semi-enclosed spaces, promoting a sense of intimacy and community across the site on a human scale.

The project’s 4000 residential units are comprised of six general typologies and three ultra-low energy consumption typologies, spanning areas of 40 square meters, 50 square meters, and 60 square meters. Light-coated board is used as the partitions between the rooms, enabling ease of maintenance and flexibility for decoration by residents.

Daylight Right
With the plot ratio of 3.5 and the height limit of 80 meters, the high density has caused many restrictions on general layout for each unit’s daylight calculation. Throughout the design process, MAD sought to ensure that every tenantable room across the project would get sufficient sunlight. The resulting scheme therefore adopts a Y-branch building form, with communal corridors located along the north face of each building to enhance sunlight exposure in the residential units.

Prefabrication and Sustainability
80% of the building components were prefabricated off-site. This prefabricated method allows for a higher quality of housing production in a controlled, systematized way. The scheme also contains two ultra-low energy consumption buildings, also known as “passive housing,” with low heating and cooling loads, allowing the buildings to reduce energy consumption by 90%.