CIFI Tianing Park Mansion / W&R Group

Curated by 韩爽 - HAN Shuang
April 05, 2019

Architects: W&R GROUP
Area: 2600.0 m²
Year: 2018
Photographs: Yijie Hu

Text description provided by the architects. The project is located in Changzhou which has been one of the major towns in Jiangnan (the south of the Yangtze River) since ancient times. It maintains people’s hope for life and spiritual relations to Jiangnan-style architecture. Two major limitations can be found in this design.

First, since it is located among high buildings, usable land is limited. Second, the functions of a sales center should be fulfilled and then it will be transformed into a community center. With these two limitations, the designer reconsidered the relationship between building and the land and then decided to design a demonstration area by starting from “Jiangnan-style habitats”. Jiangnan-style habitats have two aspects. First, it creates residential buildings. Jiangnan-style habitats consist of the roof, well and wall. Second, it also refers to Jiangnan gardens that are both house and garden.

The demonstration area’s exhibition functions are in single motion trail. Different functions should be connected, which is consistent with sightseeing trajectory of Jiangnan gardens. It is necessary to solve people’s sight shifting when they visit the demonstration area so as to realize the goal of enabling visitors to experience different scenes. The shifting and penetration allow visitors to tour around the area unconsciously.

At the same time, they also can know the feeling of living in the south of the Yangtze River. Before entering the demonstration area, people need to go through a bamboo forest, which isolates the area from urban noises. Going through the bamboo forest, they can find two abstract walls and cross over the stone bridge. Then, the entrance of the residence and the garden appears. The main functional space is a model demonstration area. The shifting of walls and daylight makes people feel different scenes change: ponds, daylight, and walls. It creates the feeling of walking in lanes and alleys in Jiangnan architecture. Actually, lanes and alleys are auxiliary lines of residences. Servants walk outside the auxiliary line. We hope to present the space in a more interesting way in our building.

Residences in Jiangnan are an assembly architectural art from materials to structure. The wall, ground, roof, courtyard and water surface are made of a single material. White wall, brick ground and wooden roof are combined and constructed to build residential buildings in Jiangnan. In this design, we deconstruct building into components.