The Flowing Garden is radically different from most of contemporary private houses in China. The owners of the house are two entrepreneur brothers. This 3-acre residential land is rectangular with short sides on the north and south. It leads north to the road and south to the sea. There are some existing buildings on the adjacent plots on the east and west sides. A 30-meter-wide municipal windbreak forest belt of she-oak is densely planted between the site and the beach. It interrupts the direct sea view from the site, but it prevents the bad influence from the strong typhoon. The owners intend to build a private house composed of three parts: two independent residential spaces for each brother’s family and a leisure space for gathering, meeting, fitness and other activities. In addition, the brothers hope that the newly-built house would be the space carrier of the whole family memories from generation to generation.
Except for the land to the south, where the ocean is barely visible through the woods, there are no desirable landscapes on the other three sides. The height of the building is limited to ten meters, therefore overlooking the terrain is not viable. Therefore, the design focuses on the courtyard space and landscaping in the interior space. The climate in Southern Fujian is generally warm. Since the ancient time, the use of courtyards has been the normal practice of local traditional residential houses. The courtyard not only improves the environmental conditions, but also creates the natural division and transition between the leisure and residential space, provoking a sense of continuous spatial flow across different areas. Most importantly, the growth of vegetation over time creates a time and memory bond that would probably meet the owners’ expectation of relaying this space to their future generations.
The next issue to be solved is the positional relationship. Firstly, we divide the site into two because its entrance/exit is on the north side of the road. The north side is allocated for the public leisure space outward, the south side is designated for the private residential space inward, and a shared pond is situated between these two parts. Then the residential part is divided in half into two independent residential units to generate a negative space, which naturally forms a ribbon courtyard between these two units. Except for the two-story volume on the north and south sides, the ground part of the buildings is spread out in a single layer. Such a spatial scale is more in line with the theme of the garden.
The internal touring route, like the long shot, is a time thread that links all the spaces. With vague boundaries of the different areas, it allows the courtyard to flow in between the rooms. Step up the stone stairs at the northeast entrance first, lean in under the eaves, and move through a series of contracting and stretching spatial sequences such as the entrance space, the central pond yard, the ribbon courtyard, etc., then pass through the south side of the buildings to the lower corridor that reaches the terrace, until the whole view is fully stretched out.
The leisure and residential parts have different functions, and scales of respective spaces are different from each other, creating contrasting atmospheres in internal spaces that are all unique. The leisure space is mainly for public activities, so the scale is relatively open and extensive. But the residential part is more compact, giving a delicate sense of home.
Project name: The Flowing Garden House
Architects: More Than Arch Studio - osarq.com/
Location: Zhangzhou, China
Area: 1700 m²
Year: 2021
Photographer: Chao Zhang -
Manufacturers: Stream
Chief Architect: Jin Niu
Interior Design: Zhenyao Huang, East Design
Structure Design: Ruobing Bai, Weijun Zheng
Furnishings Consultant: Lili Lin, Liqing Lin
Landscape Consultant: Chi Xiao, Aland Landscape
Design Team: Xiaopeng Luo, Zhiqin Xu, Xiaoda Lin, Jiadong Wu, Xiaoxiang Luo, Zhongju Chen, Huifu Hou, Shaochuan Zhang, Fenfen Gong, Xiaohui Liu, Haiyan Liu, Qian Lin, Siyang Zheng, Huachun Yu, Jianhua Wang, Zhixu Zhang, Zhiwei Xu, Shengwei Yu, Hui Cai, Xiaowei Wu
Artist: Guanzhen Wu
Collaborator: Xiamen Hordor Architecture & Engineering Design Group Co. Ltd., No.1 Civil Design Institute
Ambiment - The Ambient by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
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