Related News
European concepts underlie innovative new towns
By Zhou Yang and Wang Jie |
July 26, 2010, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
AS a highlight of the Urban Best Practices Area at the World Expo Park, the Hamburg House has been cited as a pre-eminent example of the "passive house" concept. That refers to an eco-friendly building that requires no active supply of fossil-fuel energy. It derives its warmth from solar power, geothermal energy and even from the body heat of those inside the structure.
Anting New Town has adopted similar features of energy efficiency using a different approach. Among the first batch of new towns built under the Shanghai municipal government's blueprint of "One City and Nine Towns," it has been designed as a German-style town fully integrating modern technologies. It is said to be a "replica" of the German town of Weimar, and thus is called the "German Fairy Tale." However, even a casual walk in this colorful town will remind you that this place is far more than a simple fairy tale. Rather, it is a pioneering experiment in advanced energy efficiency and environmental protection applications.
Anting New Town covers a floor area of 2.5 square kilometers, including 860,000 square meters for residential purposes. All the residential buildings are enclosed in low-rise structures of four to five stories. Breaking away from the millennia-old Chinese tradition of facing south, all the houses here look to the east or the west. Moreover, each of the nearly 10,000 apartments has been designed differently from the others to make them more people-friendly and aid in recognition. The design also calls for improved land-use ratios, populating each square kilometer with about 120,000 people, a fairly modest density when compared with the Shanghai average of 200,000.
The biggest selling point of Anting New Town is the latest energy-efficient and eco-friendly technologies applied in its designs and construction ¨? features that will change the living environment and the lifestyles of its residents. As its developer has emphasized, Anting will not be a mere replica of the German town. Instead, it will be designed to fulfill the needs of local people, adapting the latest European architecture, technology and modern materials where necessary.
For a long time, the thermal insulation standards for buildings have remained quite low in southern China. In architecture, smaller coefficients of thermal conductivity always meant better performance in thermal insulation. The current average coefficient for the exterior walls of the buildings in Shanghai is 1.47, much higher than German coefficient of 0.55. As a result, the energy consumed for heating buildings designed with the German standards is only about 30 percent of most housing in Shanghai. So far as heat preservation is concerned, the houses built in Anting New Town with the latest German architectural technologies boast protective exteriors made with quality heat-insulating materials and inward-opening windows that slow air flow to create natural convection of air at an unnoticeable levels. Most popular in Europe, this type of high-end windows has been mass introduced in Shanghai for the first time as a new wall for thermal insulation.
During the first phase of the town's development, about one million square meters of housing were built, and each house featured a unique design. Based on their case-by-case study of the building materials, directions, sizes, windows, roofs and ceilings of these houses and the type of their exterior walls, the architects applied building materials of different insulating properties and different thickness to different houses. As a result, the thermal insulation of these houses is three times the top standard usually found in Shanghai.
To ensure effective sound insulation between stories, the thickness of the flooring in Anting New Town has been set at 24 centimeters, almost twice the national standard. Moreover, heat-insulation, soundproofing and shockproofing layers have been added to keep footsteps upstairs and noise traveling from floor to floor.
In addition, innovative heating, ventilating and air-conditioning technology has been introduced in Anting to replace traditional household air-conditioning devices. According to the blueprint, the town uses water as the medium for its energy supply. Every building has its own hot-water tank and heat exchanger at its entrance, and the town as a whole runs several heat-exchange stations, each consisting of two heat exchangers and one hot-water tank. Meanwhile, each residential unit has a set of thermo-regulators to adjust indoor temperatures. Each apartment has a switch for heating or cooling. The energy consumption of such an apartment is only a fifth to a fourth of traditional homes.
While providing a higher level of living, these new technologies and designs also require people to change old habits, such as keeping windows open all the time. Another merit of the central heating system here is that it has solved the problem long haunting areas in southern China: the cold inside in an unheated apartment in winter equals the outside temperature. It feels much warmer inside after the new system is applied.
Anting has the world's longest common utility duct, stretching almost eight kilometers. It contains all the lines for water, electricity, gas and telecommunications, eliminating the expense of parallel pipes for different utilities.
Anting New Town has adopted similar features of energy efficiency using a different approach. Among the first batch of new towns built under the Shanghai municipal government's blueprint of "One City and Nine Towns," it has been designed as a German-style town fully integrating modern technologies. It is said to be a "replica" of the German town of Weimar, and thus is called the "German Fairy Tale." However, even a casual walk in this colorful town will remind you that this place is far more than a simple fairy tale. Rather, it is a pioneering experiment in advanced energy efficiency and environmental protection applications.
Anting New Town covers a floor area of 2.5 square kilometers, including 860,000 square meters for residential purposes. All the residential buildings are enclosed in low-rise structures of four to five stories. Breaking away from the millennia-old Chinese tradition of facing south, all the houses here look to the east or the west. Moreover, each of the nearly 10,000 apartments has been designed differently from the others to make them more people-friendly and aid in recognition. The design also calls for improved land-use ratios, populating each square kilometer with about 120,000 people, a fairly modest density when compared with the Shanghai average of 200,000.
The biggest selling point of Anting New Town is the latest energy-efficient and eco-friendly technologies applied in its designs and construction ¨? features that will change the living environment and the lifestyles of its residents. As its developer has emphasized, Anting will not be a mere replica of the German town. Instead, it will be designed to fulfill the needs of local people, adapting the latest European architecture, technology and modern materials where necessary.
For a long time, the thermal insulation standards for buildings have remained quite low in southern China. In architecture, smaller coefficients of thermal conductivity always meant better performance in thermal insulation. The current average coefficient for the exterior walls of the buildings in Shanghai is 1.47, much higher than German coefficient of 0.55. As a result, the energy consumed for heating buildings designed with the German standards is only about 30 percent of most housing in Shanghai. So far as heat preservation is concerned, the houses built in Anting New Town with the latest German architectural technologies boast protective exteriors made with quality heat-insulating materials and inward-opening windows that slow air flow to create natural convection of air at an unnoticeable levels. Most popular in Europe, this type of high-end windows has been mass introduced in Shanghai for the first time as a new wall for thermal insulation.
During the first phase of the town's development, about one million square meters of housing were built, and each house featured a unique design. Based on their case-by-case study of the building materials, directions, sizes, windows, roofs and ceilings of these houses and the type of their exterior walls, the architects applied building materials of different insulating properties and different thickness to different houses. As a result, the thermal insulation of these houses is three times the top standard usually found in Shanghai.
To ensure effective sound insulation between stories, the thickness of the flooring in Anting New Town has been set at 24 centimeters, almost twice the national standard. Moreover, heat-insulation, soundproofing and shockproofing layers have been added to keep footsteps upstairs and noise traveling from floor to floor.
In addition, innovative heating, ventilating and air-conditioning technology has been introduced in Anting to replace traditional household air-conditioning devices. According to the blueprint, the town uses water as the medium for its energy supply. Every building has its own hot-water tank and heat exchanger at its entrance, and the town as a whole runs several heat-exchange stations, each consisting of two heat exchangers and one hot-water tank. Meanwhile, each residential unit has a set of thermo-regulators to adjust indoor temperatures. Each apartment has a switch for heating or cooling. The energy consumption of such an apartment is only a fifth to a fourth of traditional homes.
While providing a higher level of living, these new technologies and designs also require people to change old habits, such as keeping windows open all the time. Another merit of the central heating system here is that it has solved the problem long haunting areas in southern China: the cold inside in an unheated apartment in winter equals the outside temperature. It feels much warmer inside after the new system is applied.
Anting has the world's longest common utility duct, stretching almost eight kilometers. It contains all the lines for water, electricity, gas and telecommunications, eliminating the expense of parallel pipes for different utilities.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
