Situated in Zhangjiawan Design town in Tongzhou District, the permanent venue for Beijing Design Week was transformed from Beijing Beipao Light Steel Building Materials Co., Ltd. The main structure of the venue is about to be completed. The roof structure and curtain walls will be built and the venue is expected to be unveiled at the end of September.
As a major municipal project and a major project for improving Beijing's role as the center for international exchanges, the permanent venue for Beijing Design Week will be used mainly for hosting conferences, forums, exhibitions, and displaying collections as well as serving as a place for transactions and commercial services upon completion. The venue also has main functional areas including exhibition hall, available office space for rent, global press conference hall and design library.
During Design Week, the venue will become the largest outdoor exhibition venue for the Beijing Design Week. When Design Week is over, it will host design-themed activities, hold exhibitions, provide space for functional offices, etc., on a regular basis to help build Zhangjiawan Design town into a well-known cultural and artistic zone.
Entering the construction site, one can find the protruding part of the main structure stunningly standing out under a high tower crane.
The interior of the building is characterized by thick steel columns, representing typical industrial features. According to Xiang Hu, a person in charge of the construction project from Beijing Construction Engineering Group, these columns are leftover parts from the previous light steel mill. When the main mill was dismantled, the original steel structure was kept intact, which stands in stark contrast to the new building. In this way, one can feel a blend of old texture with a new touch and that is how the design goal of "old form with new content" is achieved.
Walking around the venue, our reporter found out that the old mill built more than 20 years ago has undergone a "green transformation." "Take a look at this," Xiang Hu said, "these through-wall bushings will be connected to the ground source heat pump so we can use the power of nature to keep the interior of the building cool or warm." In comparison with the alternate four seasons and drastic temperature changes above the ground, the underground normal temperature zone basically stays around 15 degrees Celsius all year round. Taking advantage of this very nature, the ground source heat pump exchanges heat with that in the normal temperature zone through over 100 pipes to reduce the energy consumption of the building overall. It will provide some heat for the building in winter and replace air conditioners to help cool down the building in summer. In this way, not only can we make full use of clean energy but also save a lot of operating and maintenance costs. On top of all that, we can significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.
The Beijing Design Week Permanent Venue Project was also "green" enough in the construction process. Instead of adopting the old construction methods of creating masonry manually and casting the concrete on site, this project embraced an assembly method. That is, the main components were processed in the factory and transported to the construction site for assembly, which has not only saved energy, materials and manpower but also greatly reduced dust pollution on site. "We will continue sticking to the green standards when constructing the roof and curtain walls in the next phase," Xiang Hu said. Part of the curtain walls will be built with a new kind of brick made of natural clay that has gone through extrusion molding and high-temperature calcination. No other ingredients are added, so the brick has great properties including eco-friendly, no radiation, mild color, and zero light pollution.
In the future, the permanent venue will strive to be a "world design center" to release the latest design information, hold cultural activities and exhibitions, as well as provide office and commercial space.
(Reporter: Chen Qiang)
