01 Overview
Located in the most secluded hinterland in Guangzhou, The Peakview is the endpoint of the 2km green axis. Imagined as a secret forest gathering point in the bustling city, the project was built as a hidden paradise. As a continuation of the green line of the community, the project utilises the terrain and creates a sunken garden of 13,000sqm. This low-density cluster, consisting of 14 structures with a height of 42m, is making a futuristic declaration. Among the limited sample of 408 households, architecture and equipment are self-contained as a complete system, with adaptive cold-and-hot cycles and an advanced ventilation system, which is known as the ‘breathing building’.
02 Equipment-building integration
Empowered by the 'Constant System', the heating, cooling, and ventilation inside these buildings can be independently managed. The ‘Constant System’ is an air conditioning system with higher level of comfort than traditional ones, which adopts capillary radiation to cool or heat the indoor environment based on insulation and heat preservation. This is achieved through a system composed of ceramic panels, aluminium panels, insulated aluminium alloy double-sided Low-E silver plated glass, and the external sunshade electric roller blinds. Such design can effectively isolate the exterior heat and reducing the cooling load of the structure, which ultimately enhances the general resilience of the project. When heating or cooling is required, water that drawn from equipment rooms under each building respectively circulates through capillary radiation pipes embedded in the walls to achieve temperature control.
03 Integration of High-Low Techs
Adopting a façade of ceramic panels, the project interprets traditional renewable materials from the perspective of Building Science. With clay as the basic material and extruded into shape, making it has excellent durability, the surface of building is fully covered with the low-tech produced ceramic panels. In addition to providing necessary shading for the building, such a unique hollow design reduces its weight, while improving air flow on the surface. Theoretically, the façade does help with insulation in summer and slows down the heat release in winter, ensuring the whole building at a stably and comfortable temperature range throughout the year. Unlike glass curtain wall systems, the material of ceramic is covered with pores, which can absorb sound waves and limit noise interference from expressways.
The style of architectural form tends to organic, deliberately retaining rounded corners and arcs. In addition to drawing inspiration from the nature, even more important though is the fact that arcs and rounded corners facilitate airflow circulation and delivering a more mild distribution of thermal gains. To maintain the maximum operational efficiency of the system, the structure adopts a five-fold heat-preservation design, and tailoring insulation materials and strategies for different components of the building. According to the energy consumption analysis, the application of a complete set of system enables buildings to achieve 70%-90% energy saving, reducing 30% compared to reference samples.
04 Rewrite
The result of design starts as a study of the local habits on residential, with a focus on maintaining the evolution of experiencing comfort in the increasingly uncertain environment. The aim of this is to develop new living concepts under a stagnant situation, and further achieving more comfortable and better energy-efficient residential performance. Engineers from Landleaf Tech participated in this interdisciplinary collaboration topic, developing climate adaptive strategies that are in line with regional climate conditions, and assisting architects to introduce new concepts in response. Within this project, the equipment is as a building and vice versa. Traditional design process has been overturned, and the contribution of equipment has been prioritised for the first time. In the future, where the environment is deteriorating, the equipment system regulating the status of built environment will play an unprecedentedly role in space-making, for the sake of comfort.