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Architects: line+ studio
- Area: 2284 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Zhi Xia, line+, ten vision studio
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Lead Architects: Fanhao Meng
Text description provided by the architects. Fragrant Lake is a cultural tourism resort community located in the north of Wuhan City, with wilderness and lakes as the original natural community environment. Meng Fanhao, the co-founder and chief architect of line+ studio, was invited to design the first public building in the entire community - the Community Center of Fragrant Lake.
The public life of the community is not only to meet the diversity and richness of activities but also includes the goal of spiritual reshaping. Under the trend of flat, fast, and decentralized times, we hope to use “light” as a medium to create a “daily centrality” that re-links the intimate relationship between people and between people and nature.
The design extracts and abstracts from key elements such as the cornice form and color tone of the Yellow Crane Tower and local traditional buildings, and generates a roof form in which floating cornices and viewing platforms are embedded, implying a majestic and profound local architectural culture. The giant roof not only constitutes the central meaning of the community coordinates in form but also has the plasticity of a deeper spiritual medium for the interior space.
The natural attributes of the site first determine the orientation of the building - facing the northwest, extending to the natural transition; backing to the southeast, and providing direction guidance for the community. The design organizes functional modules such as reading, communication, display, and theater, and covers a continuous large sloping roof, gathering inwards and extending outwards. The overlapping roofs with deep eaves generate rich grey space and internal activity area below the roof. The activity areas and observation deck are above the roof. Small-scale volumes are positioned to draw natural light and lake views inside, such as daylighting skylights and lake-view windows.
The building as a whole adopts the structural form of a reinforced concrete structure base + partial steel structure roof. The three raised roofs are the center of the structure and the center of the space. Therefore, the concept of "Book Tower" and "Light Atrium" was conceived in the design, and the large-sized components were integrated into it. In this way, a unique and introverted space atmosphere will be generated, as well as to seek the central coupling of structure and architecture.
The roof adopts the stepped panel metal roofing system, with obvious vertical edge lines, showing a warm and lustrous texture in the sun. The edge treatment of the roof cornice continues to use the same type of metal roof panels to make the roof and ceiling continuous and complete. The light and slender cornice and the large-area hidden frame ultra-white glass curtain wall together create a deep sense of borderlessness, which melts into the wilderness and forest.
