Shaoxing Rice Wine Town Reception Room – Dongpu town, where the project is located, has been the center of Shaoxing wine industry since ancient times. The project is an experiment in modular design and construction by the gad design team. It is associated with traditional Chinese construction methods, and responds to complex functional construction demands with a unified modular design language, responds to the site and history, infuses the vitality of the times into the thousand-year-old ancient town, and inherits the yellow rice wine culture in a dynamic way.
Architizer chatted with gad to learn more about this project.
Architizer: What inspired the initial concept for your design?
gad: The original site was a workshop for producing rice wine, now its red brick chimney is preserved. In the early stage of the project, it will be used as Shaoxing Yellow Rice Wine Exhibition and Experience Hall. Later, it will be converted into a waterfront commercial building. Due to the functional transformation in different periods and the avoidance of large-scale civil construction, the division of architectural space must be flexible. Drawing on the strong functional adaptability of traditional wooden frame architecture and Domino architecture system, the scheme decided to take 4.8mx4.8mx4.8m cubic square as the basic module of the building. This module can simultaneously adapt to the plane and floor height requirements of basic space such as exhibition, shop, restaurant, toilet, elevator room, etc.
© gad
© gad
This project won in the 10th Annual A+Awards! What do you believe are the standout components that made your project win?
Through the investigation and comparison of various materials, the facade decoration is made of recycled bamboo as the main material of the exterior wall: The recycled bamboo is made from original bamboo, which has the advantages of convenient materials, simple processing technology and environmental protection. The bamboo planks are preprocessed into L-shaped members in the factory, which reduces the on-site assembling workload and joint treatment, and improves the construction speed and the accuracy of on-site installation.
The project is associated with traditional Chinese construction methods, and responds to complex functional construction demands with a unified modular design language, responds to the site and history, infuses the vitality of the Times into the thousand-year-old ancient town, and inherits the yellow rice wine culture in a dynamic way.
© gad
© gad
What was the greatest design challenge you faced during the project, and how did you navigate it?
Modular space and modular form are highly unified, bringing the maximum degree of rapid prefabrication and installation, but also fit the actual requirements of rapid construction and cost control. The original plan was to adopt a wooden structure. In consideration of the tight cycle of the project and the fire prevention standards of large-scale wooden structure buildings, as well as the rainy climate in Jiangnan, the poor durability of wooden structure and high maintenance requirements in the later period, the wooden structure form was finally abandoned and the steel frame structure form was adopted which was more fast and controllable.
© gad
© gad
© gad
To learn more about this project, please visit the in-depth project page on Architizer.
Shaoxing Rice Wine Town Reception Room 
