Calm Hill, is located in Beijing, at the foot of the Great Wall. The client hopes the building would be a carrier which could exhibit an attitude of “Giving time back to life” create a serenity life style. Traditionally, houses in northern China are tightly enclosed by a surrounding wall. From the outside, not much can be observed of the house’s interior design or features. This ‘closed’ form of architecture is typical of houses in northern China, where weather conditions can be considerably harsh during the winter. However, houses in southern China are traditionally more ‘open’, given the warmer climate of the region. Our design balances these two traditional forms – maintaining a ‘closed’ northern aesthetic whilst strategically ‘opening’ parts of the design to allow for a more dynamic modern feel. We hope to break the conventional exhibition mode of conveying the information by simply showing objects or pictures. We used locally sourced the material such as charred timber, mao-bamboo, schist stone which representing the local culture. The material complements the building, creates an environment with rich perspectives of immersive, multi-sensory experience. The rusting steel plate window holes with different proportions form a combination, connecting people and scenes in the space. The viewers on the other side are attracted by these disordered fragments, and then they have their own wonderful story in their minds. The concept of "half" allows architecture and landscape to be divided into two parts. Moderate concession, leaving room for each other, is restraint. They nested, infiltrated, connected, balanced, and made everything possible. Looking back at the building from the middle of the field, the “White House” floats on the rice spike. The diagonal wall is a composite strip of openings, it has provoking people’s curiosity and attracting people back to inside to found out what is happening. There were originally two white poplar trees on the north side of the site, we incorporated the nearest one into the internal courtyard of the building, became the garden view tree of landscape toilet; the other one just intersects the building boundary, we gave way to the space and made the tree part of the entrance and exit. Respect the site and nature, and nature gives us more surprises. This is what we hope to achieve by walking inside and outside of the building, so that people spontaneously go out of the outdoors to explore and discover, and then come back to the building to enjoy a well-planned multi-level sensory experience.
IAPA PTY. LTD. as one of the leading Australian practitioners in architectural design, urban design, landscape design, interior design, we provide internationally standard services to any leading developers anywhere in the world. After years of committed practice, IAPA core members with international educational backgrounds have established cooperation and partnerships with internationally design institutes. Through local knowledge and international support, IAPA is constantly advancing in the Chinese design arena through strong architectural design statements. The team has extensive experience in commercial, residential and retail developments and prides itself in ensuring that each individual client’s requirements are met, and their expectations exceeded.
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