The reporter learned from the Zhoukoudian Beijinger Site Management Office that a few days ago, the Cultural Commissioner of the UNESCO Beijing Office awarded the "UNESCO Asia-Pacific Cultural Heritage Protection Award" Innovation Award for the protection of the first site of the Zhoukoudian site (Ape Man Cave).
Prior to this, the project also won the 2019 Asian Association of Architects Architecture Awards Gold Award in the Protection Project Category, the 13th China Steel Structure Project Gold Award of the China Building Metal Structure Association, and the Silver Medal for Design of the Spatial Structure Award of the Spatial Structure Branch of the China Steel Structure Association...
What kind of award did you win this time?
The UNESCO Prize for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region was established in 2000 to recognize the achievements of individuals and the public and private sectors in protecting or restoring buildings, places and immovable properties of heritage value in the region in order to encourage individual participation and public-private partnership to preserve the cultural heritage of the region for the benefit of present and future generations.
Why build this project?
As the source of the Skull of the Ape Man in Beijing, the first site of the Zhoukoudian site (Ape Man Cave) faces a series of natural damage mainly due to wind and rain erosion, such as weathering, flaking and instability. After a heavy rainstorm in 2012, the bottom of the cave and the western section found that the rainwater quickly accumulated and then disappeared. Later, field investigation proved that there were large dissolution fractures and fracture zones at the bottom of the cave, which seriously endangered the overall stability of the site.
Subsequently, the relevant departments began to promote the implementation of the first site of the Zhoukoudian site (Ape Man Cave) to protect the building plan. Construction began in May 2015. At the end of August 2018, the project passed the completion acceptance and was officially opened to the public at the end of September 2018. The protected building is like the "steel helmet" of the ape cave, which can not only isolate the direct effect of rain, snow, hail and sunlight on the site itself, but also slow down the effect of wind and temperature difference and reduce natural weathering.
What are the highlights of this project?
1. Integrate with the natural environment
The conservation building follows the principles of minimal intervention and reversibility, using a large-span space single-layer mesh shell structure that spans the ape-man cave site in the form of a "protective shed". The design team used the contour lines of the existing mountains as a clue to derive the mountain form before the collapse of the Ape Man Cave, and based on this, the overall shape of the protected building was obtained, so that the protected building was morphologically integrated with the surrounding mountain environment. The outer skin of the protected building is a green roof, so that it is hidden in the green trees.
2, 825 blades "pair into the seat"
The shelter is not a smooth whole piece, but 825 leaves, staggered with each other, protecting the outside of the shed and ensuring the healthy growth of vegetation through fully automatic irrigation technology.
The inner roof is designed with rock wall patterns to convey information about the interior environment of the site to the audience. The viewer walks into the ruins area as if they were in a real cave and does not feel the presence of a protective shed.
3. The cave wall inside the site becomes a "screen"
Nowadays, there is a lot of high-tech equipment in the Ape Man Cave. The cave wall becomes a digital display platform, using multimedia technology, focusing on the excavation information on the west side wall, and at the same time introducing the historical background and overall results of the excavation of the Ape Man on the north side wall, so that the public can understand the value of the site in the site environment and achieve the best interpretation effect.
4. Full monitoring of engineering data
During the construction process, the design team simulated many factors such as the shape of the protected building, the size of the seam, the temperature and humidity, lighting and ventilation and many other factors in the whole process of design through the digital wind tunnel technology, based on the meteorological monitoring data of the small environment of the Ape Man Cave, to provide an adjustment basis for the design and ensure the scientific and reasonable design plan of the protection building.
Small Archives:
Name: Zhoukoudian Beijing Man Ruins First Site (Ape Man Cave) protection construction project
Location: Fangshan, Beijing
Type: Protection Project
Site area: 2878 square meters
Building area: 3487 m2
Project year: 2018
Source Beijing Daily Client | Reporter Chen Qiang
Edited by Wang Haiping
Process Editor Wu Yue