Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Facade
Mountain house in the mist. Image © Yilong Zhao

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Windows, FacadeMountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - BeamMountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Table, Beam, Garden, PatioMountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Table, Shelving, Wood, Windows, Chair, BeamMountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - More Images+ 49

  • Moderator: Lin Chen
  • Project Architect: Dongying Liu
  • Participating Architects: Dongying Liu, Shiqiang Yang, Xuelia Jiann
  • Project Owner: Hongfu Tourism Group Co.Ltd
  • City: Jinhua
  • Country: China
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Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Windows
Bird's eye view of the book house. Image © Yilong Zhao

Text description provided by the architects. Mountains surround the house in the south, covered with thick forests. The house is located in an ancient mountain forest in Wuyi County, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province. The village maintains complete features from old inhabitants in this area, with buildings scatters in different altitudes by the mountain line and dense trees with a history of over one hundred years at the entrance. The book house sits not far from the square at the entrance, beside which are well-preserved courtyard houses made in rammed earth. The old cowshed used to locate in the yard but was removed after it collapsed.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Image 7 of 54
Overlook of the building fitting into the surroundings. Image © Yilong Zhao

The book house aims to create a serene reading space that clams people down, thus attracting more young people and children to return to the mountains. It also provides a colorful and quiet place so that children and the elderly can feel freedom and happiness in this house.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Image 8 of 54
Bird's eye view of the book house. Image © Yilong Zhao

Bring the space and the village closer. One of our initial thoughts is to spare room for the villagers, which also brings an intuitive feeling. In the first floor of the book house, there is an overhead semi-outdoor open space, and ten structural columns hold the entire house. The closed spaces are on the second floor, connected to the outside with an outdoor staircase. There is only a tiny water bar on the first floor for water and beverages, the other places are totally open for villagers to drink, chat, and for kids to play. The open space connects all the possible activities.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Windows, Forest
Off contact book house from the southwest corner. Image © Yilong Zhao
Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Image 41 of 54
Analysis diagram
Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Windows, Facade
North facade of the book house. Image © Yilong Zhao

At the same time, from the perspective of the space relationship, the book house is in a triangle area, with the main walkway on the south and a three-meter stone wall on the north. Above the wall, there is a playground for children. By lifting up the close space of the house to give room to the space between the ground floor and the walkway, passers-by are also made able to rest under the house at any time. The second floor is on the same level as the children's play area, which makes it convenient for kids to read books or play while their parents can still pay attention to their children when reading. Whether it is from the perspective of the nature of the site or that of understanding rural life, we hope that architecture and villagers, as well as the rural environment, can remain friendly to each other.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Windows
West facade of the book house. Image © Yilong Zhao
Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Image 54 of 54
Manual model
Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Table, Beam, Garden, Patio
Villagers drinking tea and chatting on the top of the book house. Image © Yilong Zhao

Patio and time. The patio is placed in the book house as the core with a pleasant scale. There is a surface of the water below the bottom of the first-floor patio. On rainy days, water rain falls from the patio into the pool, and the sound can be heard inside the house; while when the sun shines directly, it creates a unique light and shadow effect. A patio is designed in such a small place because it makes the house more relevant to nature, time, and space. This is a sense of time in the house from my perspective.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Beam
Height difference between the house and the place. Image © Yilong Zhao

The setting of the patio looks like it is waiting for a certain time – for the sun to cast in a beautiful shadow, for the rain to drip ripples, or for the breeze to blow in. At those moments, the patio is set as a special space waiting for its significance of being created. The essence of rural architecture as I understand is a state in which people and space, people and nature, and people and time coexist harmoniously. This patio, makes it happen by including sunlight, rain, and air into the interior space.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Beam
Details of column bottom. Image © Lin Chen
Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Beam, Windows
Patio and the water pool. Image © Yilong Zhao

Corridor and communication. There are two rounds of back-shaped bookshelves on the second floor, creating a corridor around the patio and the reading space in the middle. With a comfortable width of one meter, it suspends from the structure of the first floor. The corridor provides the experience of walking around in the garden, while a lot of holes are opened according to the modular size of the back-shaped bookshelves, letting the light and airflow through the difference of size and height.

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Section

As the reader wanders around in the corridor, their horizon opens together with the entrance, and the boundaries disappear. When standing on the other side of the entrance, people can see through the window and watch others reading books on the balcony, and farther, the hills and forests far away. The perspective from different layers creates communication between people, space, and the environment.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Beam, Windows, Handrail
Staircase between the entrance and the upper floor. Image © Yilong Zhao

Experimental attempt. We have always been insisting on the design and research method of research. During the design of the book house, we made two experiments: the experiment on the morphological type, and the experiment on the application of materials.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Shelving, Beam
Multiple states of children's reading space . Image © Yilong Zhao

In terms of morphological type, the closed space of the book house is raised up, using the double-sloping roof form and slope of the local dwellings, as well as the traditional roofing and the grey tiles, but small adjustments were made on the roof ridge. It is deflected by 6.5°bringing a subtle morphological change to the roof, making one side of the roof higher than the other, and enabling the space to change through the inclination of the roof and the shelves.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Shelving, Wood, Beam
Relation between the shelves and the roof. Image © Yilong Zhao
Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Windows, Beam
Bookshelves relevant to reading status. Image © Lin Chen

In terms of materials, the bookcases use the modular structure of there-centimeter thick pinewood and is controlled by a unified modular scale language. The vertical frame of the bookshelf and the structural beam of the roof are in one-to-one correspondence, forming an overall language logic system. On the outer façade, the relatively rare sun panels in the village make the whole house translucent, and the light in the room becomes gentle through the solar panels, creating a comfortable environment for reading. The translucent material allows readers inside to have a glimpse of the outdoor landscape, achieving a semi-transparent spatial experience and atmosphere.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Table, Shelving, Wood, Windows, Chair, Beam
Reading space . Image © Yilong Zhao

Many architects are unfamiliar with the countryside, but they also make attempts to design. We are the same. We are the same. With the hope of exploration and integration, we try to intervene in the countryside as architects. In many cases, the inspiration not only comes from the intuitive judgment of the architect but is also rooted in the countryside itself, so that the locality and creativity can connect well. In fact, there are no standards for the countryside, no fixed rules, no uniqueness, and good or bad can only be judged by the village itself. I hope this will be a good start.

Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design - Windows
The book house integrated in stacked roof. Image © Yilong Zhao

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Project location

Address:Liangjiashan Village, Liucheng Town, Wuyi, Jinhua, Zhejiang, China

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Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.
About this office
Cite: "Mountain House in Mist / Shulin Architectural Design" 21 Nov 2020. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/907416/mountain-house-in-mist-shulin-architectural-design> ISSN 0719-8884

Mountain house in the mist. Image © Yilong Zhao

拾云山房 / 尌林建筑设计事务所

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