Qishe Courtyard l Refurbishment Architecture l Case Study l ARCHSTUDIO

Xishu Courtyard. Xishu Courtyard is a renovated residence located in Beijing. It's a small traditional Chinese residence with three courtyards. In Chinese language, Xishu means seven house. It is named Xishu because the address number of this house is seven and it has seven pitched roofed buildings. The residence before renovation was old and decaying. The basic wooden beam and some arched door were well preserved while most of the roofs, walls, doors, and windows were badly damaged or disappeared. The Ark studio who renovated the project had two goals in their mind. The first goal is to renovate the old. For this, the designers neatened the houses, repaired all the building surfaces, and reinforced the architectural structures. The second goal is to insert new spaces such as bathroom, kitchen, garage, pipes, and lines, as well as veranda spaces. By completing these goals, the old and new are integrated into a new whole. The residence is 15 meter in length and 42 meter in width. This is the original plan of the house before renovation. It contained three houses, one on the north, two on the sides. Ark studio retained the three courtyards in the new plan. They restored and preserved many valuable historical elements such as the gateway and carvings of the arched door openings and even a dry tree. As veranda is a basic element in traditional Chinese architecture, it is added to the plan. This veranda works as a circulation, also changes the spatial pattern. It provides a playful walking experience with fantastic views. The front courtyard is used as a parking garage. To leave more space for parking, the front and back walls are removed and the entrance door is shifted to the side. The wall between the front and middle courtyards were dismantled and replaced by a transparent veranda. The middle courtyard is a public activity space. Living room, tea room, a dining room, and a kitchen are placed in this area. A staircase connected to the middle courtyard was changed into a gentle slope. This slope enhanced the connectivity between indoor and open courtyard. The dining room has a folding door. By this door, the indoor activities can be extended to the outdoor as well. The arched door in the dining room is preserved and it becomes the entrance to the back courtyard. In the back courtyard, two bedrooms, a tea room, and a study room are added. The veranda in this area has a wave-like form to preserve the three old trees that already existed in the courtyard. It creates several small arc-shaped leisure spaces. The bedrooms are set at the backmost area. The bathroom in each bedroom is adjacent to a small yard, which ensures ample light and ventilation. Arc Studio preserved the textures of traditional architectural materials while adding some new materials. They want to retain the marks of time and present the contrast and fusion between the new and old. The original pinewood framework of the residence was maintained. The new veranda, doors, windows, and some furniture uses laminated bamboo panels. This is a material that looks like wood but feels like steel. The old pitched roof used no modern waterproof materials and had poor thermal insulation. The roof systems are optimized and also retain the original gray tiles. For the curved roof in newly built veranda, polymer mortar is used as the finish. It creates smooth textures and forms contrast with the adjacent textured tile rooftops. The old buildings were restored by reusing the gray bricks from demolished walls. The floor of the outdoor courtyard is paved with the same type of bricks to maintain visual consistency. Some of the new walls are formed by glass bricks, which have the same size of the old gray bricks. The wooden beam waste was used to make chairs. During construction, some old stone slice clay pots were found unexpectedly, which were reused as flower pots.