Organic Farm/

ARCHSTUDIO

China

Project Details

Location

Location(City/Country):

Tangshan City, Hebei Province / China
Tipology

Tipology:

Agricultural
Year

Year (Design/Construction):

2015 / 2016
Area

Area (Net/Gross):

1720 m2 / -
Operational Carbon emissions

Operational Carbon emissions (B6) kgCO2e/m2/y:

-
Embodied Carbon emissions

Embodied Carbon emissions (A1-A3) kgCO2e/m2:

-
  • Flexibility of space will allow the building to be repurposed if required
  • Building with timber helps to reduce the total embodied carbon of the building
  • Good design strategies for natural ventilation
  • Effective design strategies implemented for disassembly at end of life.

Organic Farm by ARCHSTUDIO is located in the farmland at the edge of Guye district in Tangshan, where villages and houses are scattered around. The site covers an area of 6000㎡ and is a rectangular flat land. The building serves as a processing workshop for organic food, where raw materials from organic producing areas across the country are collected, processed, and packed before being delivered as finished products. The design takes inspiration from traditional courtyard buildings, with the aim of creating a self-contained workplace full of natural light as well as a flexibility that forms a corresponding relationship with the surrounding broad and flat fields.

The building is comprised of four enclosed, relatively independent houses – a material Storage, the mill, an oil Pressing workshop and Packing Area – with the grain-sunning ground as the inner courtyard. A convenient work cycle line is formed around the inner courtyard, and the external corridor connects the four areas, serving as the boundary of the building and the route to visit the food processing workshop. The central courtyard spans out around the building randomly, forming a courtyard space of multiple layers that meets the demand for natural ventilation, natural lighting, and views of a workshop while maintaining nice interior and exterior spatial qualities. The organic connection of courtyard and house creates functional areas of different sizes under one big roof – small-sized corridors, medium-sized rooms, and large-sized workshops – which flexibly meet the requirements of use for the workshop.

To create a warm, natural, and continuous working atmosphere for this farm, the design uses glued timber as the major structure, as it is lightweight, easy to process and install, as well as being a material with  low embodied carbon properties. The building is “floating” above the ground, sitting on a 60cm cement base that allows the wooden structure to be moisture-proof against the ground and hide pipelines of some mechanical equipment. To control the construction budget reasonably, the building adopts a light wood structure – wood frame walls with a length of 2.1m, glued timber truss beams for the upper part, and wooden and felt roofing for the top. The facade is covered with translucent pc board, which is light and easy to install. The space, structure, materials, and the multiple layered exterior courtyards work together to create a warm, natural, and continuous working atmosphere for this farm.

 

Design Team: HAN Wen-Qiang, LI Xiao-Ming, WANG Han, JIANG Zhao, HUANG Tao

Photographer: JIN Wei-Qi

 

 

Want to stay up to date?

Sign up to our mailing list to receive regular updates on the most exciting news, research, case studies, and events related to sustainable design.