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Architects: Atelier Zhouling
- Area: 5356 m²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:Bowen Hou
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Lead Architect: Ling Zhou
Text description provided by the architects. Mugou Village is located in the middle of the Li-Xi-He Plain, in Yilin Town, Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province. The Mugou New Village project is in response to Jiangsu Province's "New Rural Community" construction, which was launched in 2020 and aims to enhance villagers' living conditions, address the issue of rural hollowing out, and create an integrated relationship between urban and rural areas in the new era. The project intends to implement new functions and carry out centralized government collection in The Old Village of Mugou. It also aims to develop a new village 250 meters to the west of the old one for the construction of resettlement houses, with a total of 38 households relocated in the first phase.
The continuation of the water landform - The new settlement is laid out in accordance with the design principle of "maximizing the protection of the original geographical features." The water system in Mugou Village is well-developed: the water network, water field, water pond, and village layout are connected and influenced by one another to gradually build the distinctive Lakeland geomorphic features of The Old Village settlement. The houses of The New Village settled in accordance with Lakeland's existing state. Its meticulous intervention in nature retains the integrated geomorphic elements of "water-field-village" as well as the scene sense of the old geomorphic environment.
The continuation of water network clusters of settlement texture - Mugou New Village utilizes a stylized method of spatial combination. Four units form a courtyard combination, while six to ten units form a cluster in the five various unit styles. The public courtyard serves as the focal point of the combined layout, allowing for their organic clustering and formation into the growth mode of “monomer-courtyard combination-cluster-settlement”.
The continuation of the waterside village’s feature - Mugou New Village is a modern community and a new type of water village settlement. The relationship between the new and old villages is emphasized, and traditional language is presented using contemporary design. The New Village modernizes the regional formal language, by using whiting brick walls and dark gray tile to create a striking contrast of geometric surfaces, lines, and solids while capturing the beauty and aesthetic vision of traditional dwellings in the waterside villages of northern Jiangsu.
Conclusion - The New Village's construction follows the tenet "new village, new settlement, never leaving the land and never leaving the hometown". From the four dimensions of "residence form - courtyard combination - settlement texture - water landform", the New Village maintains the traditional settlement's geomorphic, stylistic, spatial, and scale features to better integrate with The Old Village and create a familiar village environment for the villagers. This represents a significant effort for the design practice of the new village settlement in the vast rural areas of the northern Jiangsu waterside villages.
