WEAVE BLOCK | Jiaxing Wanxian Construction and Development Co., LTD. | International Residential Architecture Awards 2022

Jiaxing Wanxian Construction and Development Co., LTD.: Runner-Up of International Residential Architecture Awards 2022. The project is an important commercial scene of Yuli New Town, which is the second batch of provincial pilot projects of future community in Zhejiang Province. WEAVE BLOCK, jointly developed by Vanke Group and Yuxin Town Government, is promoted by the mode of local reconstruction and new development of the old town. It is committed to weaving future science and technology with Yuli traditional culture, organically combining community construction with town development and high-speed railway new town construction, creating an ideal model unit of the future community and the modern basic unit of common prosperity.

The community commercials demonstration area occupies about 360m², and a 7,000m² commercial water street will be built along both sides of the Sixian Bridge to bring diversified catering facilities, exquisite life experience hall and cultural scenes to the future community. The demonstration area consists of three retails, which are connected by a cantilevered roof and a connecting corridor. The separate design prototype of the pitched roof and gable wall is inspired by the old houses in Yuxin Town. At the initial stage, design team visits Yuxin Town many times to research and explore the local architectural characteristics and cultural temperament in depth, and finally decide to adopt delicate facade techniques and innovative structural forms to achieve people-friendly block experience. The scale of the building and its massive glass facade are not the most impressive elements of the design, it hopes to feel the improvement of life under the premise of restoring the life scenes in Jiangnan.

WEAVE BLOCK creates a new commercial street for Jiaxing City, and it also become the starting point of the whole future community construction process. The project spans over the bridge port and the total length of about 680m, so as to inherit the spirit of Jiangnan water town and create numerous small-scale space nodes and exquisite landscape elements, which are integrated with the commercial street. Together with the concept of living near the water, the environment gives WEAVE BLOCK a unique temperament different from other commercial streets.

The architects want the design to be natural. If it is too deliberate, the neighborhood and the city may feel disconnected, thus distracting from the purpose of building a Jiangnan water town. The project adopts the building height of one to two stories and stands modestly on the bank of the Sixian Bridge, presenting a simple and restrained architectural quality. A cafe is arranged at the entrance, with transverse cantilevered steel eaves extending 8 meters outward. The cantilevered eaves are designed at the height of one floor, placing the large scale “horizontally” to allow open access, and the three-sided cantilevered structure welcomes people from all walks of life. The cafe is column-free, and the steel structure of the curtain wall is used as a support structure for itself and the cantilevered roof, which makes the interior and exterior spaces of approachable height extremely open.

The building no longer uses a rigid inorganic volume to block pedestrians, like a transparent screen, it divides the exquisite life in the street and the simple customs along the bank. The roof of the building is wrapped by two different double curved surface roofs and suspended ceilings, and the edge of the whole roof shrinks into a thin line. When looking down from a high-rise building, or looking up at the entrance, people will feel that the roof is as light as a sunken sheet of paper. The human experience in turn introduces a kind of biophilic architecture, which is also the result of constant thinking and self-reform of design.

Project Details
Firm
Jiaxing Wanxian Construction and Development Co., LTD.

Architect/Designer
WU Tao, WANG Yuzhi

Project Name
WEAVE BLOCK

International Residential Architecture Awards Category
Recreation Built

Project Location
Jiaxing City

Team
Dai Ruli, Bai Fan, Xu Bing, Jiang Chaoyi, Dan Zhaocai

Country
China

Photography ©Credit
©Yuan Yang

Jiaxing Wanxian Construction and Development Co., LTD. as a cooperative project company between China Vanke Co., Ltd. and Yuxin Town Government, is committed to the future community construction in Jiaxing City.

Vanke has been persistently providing good products and good services to the general public, satisfying people’s various demands for a good life with its best efforts. Up till now, the ecosystem it has been constructing is getting into shape. In the property area, Vanke has always upheld the vision of “building quality housing for ordinary people to live in”. While consolidating its existing advantages of residential property development and property service, the Group’s businesses have been expanded to areas such as commercial development, rental housing, logistics and warehousing services, hotel and vacation, and education. This has laid a solid foundation for the Group to better satisfy people’s needs for a good life and to achieve sustainable development. In the future, with “people’s needs for a good life”, the Group would continue to “follow the fundamental rules of the world and strive for the best as a team” while executing the strategy of “city and town developer and service provider”. The Group would constantly create more true value and strive to be a respectable enterprise in this great new era.