Green Cloud / ZHUBO-AAO

Upper. Image © John Siu

• Architects: ZHUBO DESIGN
• Project Director: Qiao zhong
• Lead Architects: John Siu
• Design Team: Junda Li, Ke Tao, Yaomin Hu
• Area: 90.0 m2
• Project Year: 2018
• Photographs: John Siu, Yang Xu, Xiaoyan Zeng

• Structure Engineer: Licai He
• Technique Consultant: Xinxin Ren
• Landscape Consultant: Jie Liu
• Clients: The Nature Conservancy
• Building Owner & Facilities Maintenance: Glocal

Upper. Image © John Siu

Text description provided by the architects. Along with the expansion of modern city, original villages located in the edge of city have been turning into isolated islands in flourishing city. Urban village, resulting from population boom in modern China, exists in major cities as common case.

Urban Mountain. Image © John Siu

However, there is no mountain or river in the so called urban ‘village’ as in imagination, but the concrete land which is hard and impermeable. Moreover, due to the poor condition of lighting and narrow space,The first impression of most people for urban village is messy and unsafe. Architects in AAO has made a practice seeking for a solution to problems in urban village.

Diagram

Architects propose a tentative idea of Green Cloud, aiming to improve rainwater management ability as well as providing green and comfort common place for residents, from which the current living states of residents could be improved.‘Green Cloud’ is a low-technique required renovation method which can be copied easily.To make use of large quantity of roofs in urban village, architects build Urban Mountain on the roof which have potential to be reconstructed.

Urban Mountain. Image © John Siu

Axonometric

Vegetation Planting. Image © Yang Xu

Architects set up Urban Mountain on dwelling roofs to make up for this kind of Green Cloud practice be as demonstration. We hope adjacent residents could be impacted to master the construction skill of Urban Mountain idiopathically and after that,copy them to their own roofs.As Urban Mountains being built in urban village one after another and connecting in the sky,a new landscape full of fun, joy and greening that we planned is coming out — the Green Cloud.

Urban Mountain. Image © John Siu

A residential dwelling constructed in 80s (located in Gangxia Village, Shenzhen) has been selected as practice base for Urban Mountain.The practice is named ‘Yugong Plan 2.0’, the first Urban Mountain is carried to Gangxia by modern ‘Yugong’. ‘Yugong Plan 2.0’ started from 27th September and ended at 20th December, 2017.

Green Cloud

‘Yugong Plan 2.0’ thickens the un-utilized roof and lists it into second land surface among which the rainwater is preserved and greening expanded (it could also be used as vegetables and plants planting). Such two dimensional land surface could change in Z axis according to space property. It creates pavilions for social activity beneath and upper space for people’s walking and sitting.

Detail. Image © Yang Xu

Diagram

Below. Image © John Siu

Urban Mountain has gradually been a culture activity zone in urban village. Recently(June 2018), a mid-summer concert was held on Urban Mountain, 9 little musicians aged 4-11 made neighbors open the windows that had been closed for so long. After big success of the concert, other residential community activities that comes later are expected.

Detail. Image © John Siu