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Habitat Qinhuangdao offers a bold new concept for urban living: high density housing in a garden environment, combining numerous private and public gardens in the sky with a fully landscaped ground plane.
Habitat Qinhuangdao
The resort community of Qinhuangdao is 200 miles east of Beijing, with stunning views of the Bohai Sea. Rather than building a community of towers, the project organizes the housing into a series of linked mini blocks of 16 stories each, which are linked together via garden bridges at multiple levels. The bridges are also inhabited with special apartment unit designs. The resulting assemblage provides a large percentage of units with direct access to private terraces with views to the Sea, and all units with access to amenities at the bridges and garden deck levels.
The complex is organized around a beachfront boardwalk running north–south, and an east–west bazaar-like spine that connects abutting communities with the beach. The crisscrossing of these two community spines links the city with the waterfront and provides for daytime and nighttime activities throughout all seasons.
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By siting the tower blocks north-south, together with the stepped profile, the solution maximizes construction efficiency, and maintains the benefits of the individual dwelling with terraces, skylights, and solariums.
The project’s overall massing consists of individual 15-story slab buildings that connect and stack vertically in two tiers for a total height of 30 stories. The building blocks are staggered and join corner to corner between tiers, creating a mixture of units that offer a great variety of openness and views.
The resulting massing is exceedingly porous, framing views of the ocean, city and sky and providing open views from within, fostering a sense of community.
Habitat Qinhuangdao responds to the beachfront site and local zoning ordinance that requires every unit receive ample sunlight daily, measured at the low point of the winter solstice.
Individual units with terraces or solaria, contribute to the sense of livability within the community. Exterior circulation systems such as communal streets and covered skywalks, together with landscaped terraces, combine to form a true three-dimensional community.
