Public Toilets in Zuzhai Village / cnS

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  • Design Team: Hairui Lin, Ruibo Li,Zhongjing Xu,Tao Hu
  • Structure: Zimao Zheng
  • Construction Supervision: Xianggang Chun
  • Client: Tangkou township government of Kaiping City
  • City: Jiangmen
  • Country: China
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Public Toilets in Zuzhai Village / cnS - Image 12 of 31
The semi-circular design increases the comfort of the building and guides the residents' walking routes. Image © Siming Wu

Text description provided by the architects. The landscape toilet in zuzhai village, Tangkou Town, Kaiping is located in the famous hometown of overseas Chinese and the central part of Kaiping City, the hometown of Diaolou. The design site is located in the original site of the old public toilet in zuzhai village. The old materials after the demolition of the old public toilet are reused to complete the double regeneration of the old public toilet and the old materials.

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The whole picture of the ancestral village. Image © Space of Tangkou
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After the completion of the ancestral village toilet. Image © Space of Tangkou
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Building analysis

In the design of architectural form, landscape like treatment is selected in the design, part of the functional areas of the toilet are hidden under a large step for villagers' daily entertainment and activities, which solves the contradiction between the convenience and concealment of public toilets.

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The preservation of a hundred-year-old mango tree symbolizes the continuation of the village culture. Image © Siming Wu
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© Siming Wu

In the selection of materials, the design tries to create a new modulus and order, and reuse the old bricks and tiles that have lost modulus after crushing and cannot be used, so that the old materials can continue to write history in a new form.

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Landscape sketch made of ammonia. Image © Siming Wu
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Household items such as teapots placed in cages. Image © Space of Tangkou

The use of uniform modulus steel wire cage allows the brick and tile in the cage to have an extremely free organization way. The mottled old brick and old tile is like a piece of local historical fragment, breaking up these fragments, re organizing and collage them.

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The semi-circle contains landscape nodes to make indoors and outdoors more transparent. Image © Siming Wu

The whole construction process of the wall follows the gravity rule. The lower the weight the upper cage needs to bear, the greater the freedom of the masonry. More tiles, broken bricks, old teapots and other special materials are used in the materials, and more hollows are used in the masonry method to make the brick wall more transparent. When the sun rises or sets, the sunlight penetrates through the cracks of these brick walls and falls on the ground or the corner of the wall, becoming a little golden spot.

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Carefully selected coatings make the walls more layered. Image © Siming Wu

These materials bear the memory of the past of the whole site. The architect hopes to put them into the new building in a fragmented form, so that the whole site can still find some ordinary and moving details about the old time after renewal.

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Bricks extend from heavy to light. Image © Siming Wu
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Historical change, new and old replacement. Image © Siming Wu

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Project location

Address:Zuzhai village, Tangkou Town, Kaiping, Jiangmen, Guangdong, China

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Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.
About this office
Cite: "Public Toilets in Zuzhai Village / cnS" 19 Nov 2019. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/928461/public-toilets-in-zuzhai-village-cns> ISSN 0719-8884

Children are happy and playful. Image © Siming Wu

开平塘口镇祖宅村景观厕所 / 竖梁社

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