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Architects: YXDesigners
- Area: 5000 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:YXDesigners, Juntian Lin
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Lead Architects: Jiahong Lu,Yiwen Xue
Text description provided by the architects. Yao-Hakka Yard, located in Ruyuan Yao Autonomous County, Shaoguan City, Guangdong Province, is neighboring the Yao migration Town and Hakka village, so it is titled "Yao-Hakka" to express the best wishes for the harmony of the two peoples. Yao-Hakka Yard can be regarded as a deconstructed architectural museum—an assemblage of fragmented constructs sourced from local villages, encompassing elements of both traditional and contemporary designs.
These fragments, after undergoing translation and recombination, are integrated within the square, serving as a commemoration of vanishing architectural traditions and an exploration of the aesthetic potential inherent in everyday rural constructions. The dispersed form and utilization of indigenous architectural vocabulary enable the square to seamlessly assimilate into the visual fabric of the local villages.
YXDesigners respects local construction traditions. Ruyuan Guo-shan Yao, in the past, built houses with rammed earth brick, wood beams, and clay tiles in old villages on the mountain; now, most have moved down the mountain to live in the new villages built of reinforced concrete houses. Old houses are uninhabited and in disrepair. The traditional village style is difficult to survive.
To commemorate Guo-shan Yao's not-so-distant construction history, YXDesigners installed a wooden tiled stage and pavilion in the square. Earth-tone reinforced concrete exhibition wall shares the same color and texture as the rammed earth. To achieve this, we conducted a series of experiments and adjusted the proportion of iron oxide mixed in concrete.
Finally, the concrete walls preserve the traditional remembrances and replace the rammed earth brick wall, which has insufficient structural strength. Small-piece wooden frameworks were intentionally utilized for concrete forming, which has been commonly used in building rural roads and bridges in the past few decades.
The narrow openings in the exhibition walls are a reminder of the window holes in the traditional Hakka houses. Recycled rammed earth bricks building walls and recycled old wooden doors and windows forming the facade of the exhibition store all contrast the traditional and the new construction methods. River stone building, as an endangered rural manual construction technique, has been widely used in this yard construction to provide jobs for the old craftspeople who still have knacks.
The selected materials for the yard construction (such as river stone, concrete, weathering steel, and wood shingles) have a local, rough texture, which integrates with the village identity rather than abruptly altering it. The Yard, which is "old from birth", does not need to avoid becoming "old" through intensive post-maintenance like urban buildings. Over the years, the Yard will grow into a charming appearance full of the stories of the time.
A veranda surrounds the Yard to resist the subtropical burning sun and pouring rain, forming the central open space. The veranda also links the library and exhibition hall, agricultural and specialty products exhibition shop, bicycle station, gallery, exhibition pavilion, festival stage, children's playground, and other functional places for the villagers and the aiding rural construction team. In the Lingnan climate, the creation of shaded spaces becomes an innate measure.
The library employs mass displacement, actively shaping shadows through the strategic use of corridors, projecting eaves, elevated structures, and passageways. The covered gallery enclosing the square features photovoltaic panels on the roof, serving the dual purpose of harnessing solar energy while providing shade for the daily activities and festive performances of the Yao and Ke villagers.
