Qixi-Village
Waterfront Cottage
Type: Proposal
Collaborator: Chenyu Huang, Zhaoxuan Wang
Project: Cottage
Location: Qixi-Village, Zhejiang Province, China
Date: May, 2020
The project is located on the waterfront of a historic town named Qixi Village, next to the Qianjiangyuan National Forest Park in southeast of Zhejiang province, China. The cottage sits on an elevated topography, surrounded by picturesque landscape, and has access to uninterrupted views to the nearby rivers and mountains from all directions.
The main focus of the design is to take advantage of the typography, creating an intimate architecture that adapts to the sloping landscape. The circular plan allows each guest room to uninterrupted, panoramic view from water and national park, while facing away from other rooms and ensuring maximum privacy.
As a result, the cottage creates unique hospitality experience for travelers, backpackers, and family visitors, as they engage in intimate relationships with the immersive landscape and cherish the simple joy of living with nature.
The architectural concept is based on a simple and efficient plan solution, by organizing the program along circular circulation, the project effectively eliminated hallway space. All the featured programs have access to direct view from surrounding landscape, including views to the water, mountain and historic village.
As visitors walk along the circulation, they approach moments of interaction between visitor and the landscape scene, and they experience this interaction by seeing the landscape being "framed" by architecture. The central axis extends south towards the waterfront to create a viewing deck. The combination of viewing deck and internal garden create a collective space that brings opportunity for shared experiences through variety of events.
Lodging spaces, such as standard guest rooms and guest villas, along with amenities are located in the circular plan on the upper slope of the site on the west. Other supporting service and retail spaces are located on the east of the lower side of the lope. The east and west programs are linked together by two central axes that lead to the public realm and waterfront.
The loop and axes creates strong directionality within the architecture, and allows the visitor to experience all programs with clear navigation. Intersecting the two axes create porous public space that is accessible for both the visitors and local residents. The internal garden is a clearly defined space that distinguishable from external landscape.
The building has wooden structure resting on steel columns. The exterior is cladded with treated hardwood paneling, to emphasize the beautiful aesthetic and durability of the material, as well as making the architecture fit into the context.
The circular layout also provides an immediate overview of the building upon arriving at the building. The main inner access is located at the inside of the circle. Two axes are external access from the village and waterfront that intersect in the central courtyard space, highlighting and completing the circulation.
The room interior is composed of a wood floor finish on top of smooth-polished concrete, with walls and ceilings cladded in wood panels with the same intervals as on the exterior cladding. Roof skylight provides natural lighting for standard guestrooms, as well as the upper-level spaces in guest villas. At night, visitors can see the starry sky from their bed. The skylight and pitched roof create a unique outline of the cottage massing that highlights the building profile within the landscape.
The SPA features an infinity pool, offers a visual effect of water seemingly extending into the surroundings environment, and a breathtaking experience of merging with nature beyond.
