Articles by Collin Chen

Wood waste remained from demolition and construction
Located at Longquanguan Town, Fuping County, Hebei, Luotuowan Village borders Shanxi Province, at the foot of the north side of Taihang Mountains. Surrounding mountains resulted in poor transportation to the village, which held back the village’s economic development and caused an increasing number of dilapidated houses. In recent years, however, the local government has allocated plenty of financial and material resources to renovate and construct houses in the village and help it shake off poverty. After unremitting efforts, quality of villagers’ life has been gradually improved. Before the renovation, villagers were allowed to choose a traditional wooden roof or roof made of cast-in-situ concrete for the house. The latter solution was more preferred because it was easier to implement and most of residents here were middle-aged and elderly people. During the village revamping process, a large number of wooden beams and rafters were dismantled and left over. Previously, the wood waste had been used to make a fire for heating and cooking. But in these days, due to the call for ecological environment protection and forest fire prevention as well as the fact that air source heat pumps and gas equipment for cooking were introduced into the village, the dismantled woods of various sizes were left unused.

The case is located on one of the roof top of Shanghai Ganquan Foreign Languages Middle School. It’s a re-transformation case against the original flat-to-slope roof.This is from the designers’ perspective, an innovative attempt on school space transformation, in which all space is different from the conventional classroom, so as to express the Ganquan School’s smart innovation culture and spirit.

MH Creative relocates the new office to the old factory of “YUAN HE TANG”, a China Time-honored Brand in Quanzhou. When visitors come to the scene for the first time, they linger on the vicissitudes over years. Water traces are mottled on the walls. Light spots, projected by the round holes of the canopy, play hide-and-seek between the beams and columns. In an instant, an impulse is triggered so as to wake up the sleeping spatial memory, inject new vitality, and let it continue and grow.