Architects from more than 20 countries including China, the United States and Japan will build a model sustainable housing base in Beijing Elk Garden in southern Beijing's Yizhuang Economic Development Zone, the Beijing Evening Post reported on Monday.
The base will be jointly developed by the Beijing Order Center for Research and Development of Urban Eco-friendly Housing and the Beijing Institute of Science and Technology.
Yan Peijin, president of the Order Group, said the base will be comprised of public service and housing demonstration areas.
The public service area will include a 2,000-square meter multi-functional eco-friendly exhibition hall and a 400-square meter eco-friendly classroom.
The demonstrative area will include 50 model eco-friendly residential properties build on 120 mu (8 hectares) of land with each covering 1,000 square metres. The first 20 properties will be built through cooperative efforts with foreign countries and the remainder will use domestic bidders.
Sustainable properties -- defined as energy efficiency and non-polluting -- have become increasingly prevalent worldwide in recent years.
An American university designed and built a sustainable four-bedroom house with rainwater recovery and water filtration systems that was also installed with a wind dynamotor, solar batteries and a sewage and night soil disposal pit, which provided fermented waste as fertiliser for an attached garden.
Also in the United States, a sustainable building in Chicago was walled with plants instead of bricks and concrete. An American construction company built housing frames with recycled steel and the American state resource protection commission built their headquarters with recycled materials including used newspaper, glass and wheat straws.
The first sustainable office building in Berlin was installed with a 64-square meter solar battery in its facade. The building was also equipped with water-storage facility on its roof to collect and store rainwater, which was used to irrigate grass on the roof. Water not used by the grass filtered down to a storage facility and used to flush toilets.
A number of sustainable houses in the Netherlands are covered with grass on the roof and installed with solar batteries in the walls and detectors inside to monitor temperature, dust and chemicals.
The Beijing Elk Garden base will feature eco-friendly residential properties built in accordance with climates found in different countries and is scheduled to be completed in two years, the paper reported.
(Xinhua News Agency February 27, 2002)
