Residential
Longyang Residential Complex
By Clifford Pearson

Developers of highrise housing complexes usually build by formula, having learned over the years to maximize every square centimeter and minimize wasted space. In cities such as Hong Kong, developers often use the same floor plans over and over again, changing only the colors of paint and a few details applied to the buildings’ exteriors. When Qingyun Ma accepted the job of designing the Longyang housing complex in Shanghai, he decided he would not just decorate an old formula. Instead he would challenge it, while still delivering a project that wasted very little space and could be built inexpensively.

The project encompasses 185,000 square meters of gross floor area in 16 buildings, each with about 100 apartments. The client, Shanghai Kangwei Development Co., had its roots in the shipping and export businesses and was just starting to get into property development. So it was more willing to experiment with the project’s architecture than traditional developers might have been. It also believed that innovative architecture would give the project a competitive advantage and help sell the apartments quicker.

Ma’s design strategy was to subvert the usual housing formula by providing variety in both the apartment layouts and the buildings’ exterior architecture. He also wanted to maximize the amount of daylight reaching the apartments and the amount of green space between the buildings. To accomplish the first task he designed buildings with four different kinds of units, plus duplexes on the top of half of the buildings. The typical dwelling units, which range in size from less than 100 square meters for a small two-bedroom apartment to 180 square meters for large three-bedroom apartments. The duplexes offer 4- and 5-bedroom layouts. The apartments are all floor-through units, so they enjoy views in two directions, plenty of daylight, and good natural ventilation. By arranging pairs of apartments around elevator cores, the architect eliminated corridors and maximized the amount of living space in the buildings. He also established a sense of variety and a visual rhythm to the building elevations by alternating two different kinds of balconies: one with a white frame around it and the other with a just a clear-glass balustrade.

Ma accomplished his second task by bending the buildings’ floorplates to the north or south, which breaks down the mass of the 16- and 18-story structures and helps create communal green spaces between them. He placed the taller buildings (the ones with duplexes on the top) on the north part of the site, so their shadows would fall on the street, rather than adjacent apartment towers.

The apartments are aimed at middle-income families, not the luxury-end of the market. So the budget and schedule were tight, and the architect couldn’t rely on expensive finishes or details to make the project work. Instead, he used innovative architecture and planning to make Longyang exciting.