{"id":940,"date":"2014-12-03T11:55:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T10:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/?p=940"},"modified":"2015-02-05T17:20:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T16:20:51","slug":"wa-shan-the-guesthouse-on-xiangshan-campus-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/wa-shan-the-guesthouse-on-xiangshan-campus-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Wa Shan – The Guesthouse on Xiangshan Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"

This project is located on the Xiangshan campus designed by Wang Shu and his team in Hangzhou. It is a supplementary facility of living and also to meet the increasing needs of the visitors\u2019 accommodation. The site is on the south side of the Xiangshan hill, along the river, narrow from the south to north and long from the east to west. The building area is about 5,000 square meters more. But to this site, the volume of the building might be too big and the height might be too high. It is difficult to handle the relationship between the building and the hill, the trees and the river.
\nFrom the architect\u2019s point of view, the special atmosphere formed by a building on a site is the most important. Nature here is full of potential poetic. Good building can reveal this poetry in the silent conversation with the environmental atmosphere. The seemingly simplest solution is to build another layer hill on the south side of the Xiangshan hill. But this is a hill covered with recycled old tiles, named \u201cTiles Hill\u201d.\u00a0This assumption was also derived from the architect\u2019s travel experience in the west mountain area of Hunan Province twenty years ago. A village had been constructed along the river. There were hundreds of traditional fold residential houses with sloping roofs, connected by a winding tile cover and the streets and lanes were all covered with a huge continuous tiles roof. This smart solution to the rainy and extremely hot summer climate also implied imagination and poetry. Under the 120-meter long tile roof newly designed by the architect, the pine wood bars form a space of large span. Below are more than thirty rammed earth walls of 60 cm thick, dividing the building into six independent units. From the east to west it is possible to find respectively the tea house, the conference center, the restaurant and three courtyard pattern hotels. Taking into consideration the strict earthquake-resistance rules, concrete frame structure is used to support the rammed earth walls.
\nThe hotel courtyard located at the west point was derived from another memory: a fragment from the Ningbo Tengtou Pavilion of the Shanghai Expo designed by the architect three years ago. The person in charge of this project was so impressive to this building and was afraid that temporary building might be deconstructed that he insisted to rebuild it here. But the site is too narrow. The 50-meter long Tengtou Pavilion could only be rebuilt here with a 35-meter lenght. But it is still very charming.
\nViewed from east and west, the building looks like a hill, it twists and turns. Viewed from south and north, the building looks like a hill-shaped ventilating screen; people could see through the building so that the volume of the building reduces visually. The structure is like a small group of buildings shadowed by a huge shed. The double roof not only keeps out the heat in summer but also emerges impressive space. In rainy seasons, people could live under the shed casually and walk around freely. There are three ways to observe and experience this hill. Along the river, there is a path passing through the building. It passes many gates on the rammed earth walls Layer upon layer, many platforms hang towards the river, sort of similar as the river side of Kamo River in Kyoto derived also from the architect\u2019s travel experience. In the middle part of the building, there is another path through the whole building, rise and fall on the way. The third path is on the roof, climbing and winding. Looked at the distance, it feels like my favorite WuDai Dynasties painter Dongyuan\u2019s painting.<\/p>\n