Pusu Hostel / JiHua Atelier

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Foreword
This is a reconstruction project in Xinchang, Shanghai. What is interesting to us is that this will be a very good opportunity to explore how to remould and upgrade the widely existing new rural villas in China to meet the needs of contemporary aesthetics and life under controllable conditions.

Current problems
The original house is a traditional “Chinese farmer's house”. It has a very old-school plan: the entrance is located at the middle of 1^st floor. And in front of the entrance is the staircase for the whole house. The kitchen and storage are located at the left and right sides of the north part of the house.

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The symmetry of the plane is derived from the traditional Chinese style house, but now in Shanghai, there are no traditional hall spaces and no ancestral grades. The residence (including the farmer's house) has tended to be a modern way of living, so this kind of traditional pattern will produce a lot of questions. For example, it is difficult to set the vestibule because the position of the middle entrance; the dining room and the living room will be disturbed by each other; lack of toilets; room size is too consistent, be difficult to adjust to different functions; lack of windows.

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In addition, there are still problems such as excessive structure, waste of structure, and cumbersome local structures, such as concrete cornice, because of the cheap and low-tech construction.

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Building reconstruction
The needs of the owners are converted this farmer’s house to a modern hostel. First of all, we use some subtracting methods to change the bulky feeling of the house: remove the eaves of concrete pouring (which is now completely replaced by metal eaves); refurbish the roof, add roof eaves, design organized rainwater discharge, narrow the concrete balcony; improve the overall proportion of appearance; relocate the main entrance to the left side, straighten out the flow line; increase the size of window and add more necessary windows, set the landing window for the bedrooms.

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