Leccetella Winery Cultural Center, Murlo
Part of the brief on every project.
Most of what makes a project sustainable is decided before anything is built: where it sits, what it keeps, what it is made of and how far that material has to travel.
This applies at every scale, to a rural village in Sichuan as much as to a new district of 128,000 people outside Shanghai.
We still work by a line from our early urban research, the sustainable is transformable. Buildings and neighbourhoods should be able to grow and change with the people who use them, so they can be adapted rather than replaced.
The sustainable is transformable.
Reuse
At the 8342 Cultural District in Shanghai, a former silk factory was kept and opened as a public cultural district rather than cleared. In Bingling Village we went building by building, restoring what could be restored and replacing only what could not.
Local material
Several of our projects set a limit on how far their materials may travel. Linpan Music Town works within a 100 km radius and favours renewable stone and timber. At Leccetella the winery walls are built from the stone of the hill they stand on.
Water management
Our urban plans follow the sponge city principle. Green belts, canals and small lakes between the plots hold rainwater in heavy storms and give each neighbourhood open space. Tinglin received a Shanghai award for the best environmental new neighbourhood in 2019.
Passive design
Orientation, shade and natural ventilation come before mechanical systems. The Eco Building wraps its offices in a double façade that filters heat and holds small cultivations. Linpan relies on daylight and cross ventilation to cut its electricity use.
Prefabrication
For two years the studio studied prefabrication for hotels. At Batulao the rooms are assembled off site and inserted into a metal exoskeleton, so construction takes around 35% less time, with less waste and disturbance. The project won first prize for a new eco-friendly building in the Manila region in 2020.
The studio also takes part in exchanges between Europe and China on sustainable cities, among them the tenth anniversary of the Franco-Chinese letter of intent on sustainable urban development.