Text description provided by the architects. The building is located in the small mountain village in northern China, The village used to be a military town in Ming and Qing dynasty, a part of Great Wall is also in these village. Our site is at the foot of the Great Wall, at the top of the village.

elevation of new building. Image

Section

new and old face to face. Image

The old house was built in 1980s, Which we decided to keep, The old house in the middle of the site, only a few meters from the Great Wall, and 10 meters from the south side. This brings difficult for the modification.

house close to the Great Wall. Image

It’s hard to put a new house and a new yard in 10 meters, if we can do that, we also lost landscape advantages from the high ground. So we decided to design a side – leaking yard to solve the problem.

Corner of the building. Image

Plan

living room. Image

The old house has been broken, need to repair, We repair it in a traditional way, only to change a little bit of detail. The space between the old house and the Great Wall is used as a toilet, which has a glass roof.’

The high window. Image

We build a new house within 10 meters of the south side of the old house. Between the old house and the new house, a new courtyard has emerged. This courtyard opens in the special place, which we call it a “open pavilion”, it has the best view overlooking the village. 

courtyard view. Image

The elevation of the new house is covered by grille, this adjustable grille system also provide a transition zone between traditional villages and new house.

the courtyard link to the village. Image © Lei Jin

• Architects

  Jin Lei

• Location

  Huailai, China

• Category

  Refurbishment

• Other Participants

  Shijun Jin, Zhicai Yang, Zhenjun Zhu, Kailu Li

• Area

  229.0 m2

• Project Year

  2018

• Photographs

  Bohong Zhai, Lei Jin