A twofold historical preservation on the Dabie Mountains

Located in Nanwanggang Village, Xinyang City, the site consists of two parts - the former courtyard of township government and its adjacent grain reserve depot, which are out of service for years. The project aimed to activate its values in the new era for village stepping into a modern rural life, while preserving and revealing their original architectural appearances. The planning strategy followed the original texture and preserved the spatial scale. The site was naturally divided into clustered plazas with public/semi-public/private characteristics. A cycling station were set up along the south road whereby the gateway was located. The original township government building and the granary were reformed into hotels and conference center which emphasized on the privacy at the north side of the yard. The open field and water area on the east side were reconstructed into a shared vegetable garden and a picturesque waterscape respectively. In order to distinguish the cycling station, exhibition hall and bookbar from the residential buildings, architects made use of exposed structure, masonry bricks with various displacements and enclosed by the side-opened spaces to reflect their public property. As for the township government building renovation, a new traffic corridor and evacuation ladder were built on the north side, while the original corridor was designed to operate as a south-facing balcony and large bay windows. The old facade was made of white ceramic tiles, and such colour was preserved by using white paint. The contract between the white surface and the red bricks on the south site illustrates its unique form and functionality. Three old granaries on the north side were subsequently renovated to shared restaurant, barn-homestays and conference center. Architects made an utmost effort to retain the unique structural logic and spatial prototype in the old days of No. 7 granary, effective reinforcement has been achieved by installing the functional windows based on the original structure and implanting the concrete volume to the building facades, which showed glints between the old and the new. The raised concrete volume and newly added cold-rolled steel window frames were integrated into an organic wholeness connecting two sides spaces. The vault style of No. 8 granary as a feature of historical preservation was retained. The openings of façade windows were redesigned using cold-rolled steel, and the interior space was transformed into LOFT homestays with different spatial themes. Solid wood panels and raw cement were chosen for the interior space, which combined with courtyards partitioned by natural bamboos has created a calm and warm indoor atmosphere over the original cold industrial building. The waterfront granary follows a similar renovation concept in the No. 7 granary, sculptural concrete cylinders with a strong public characteristic were added as the core transportation of the entire building. Connecting the conference center on the second floor to the northern courtyard through the extended bridge, it allowed a direct dialogue between the building and the courtyard as well as reflected the elevation uniformity of the northern courtyard.