Architecture, landscape, interior, furnishing, and lighting design: DA XIANG Design Studio

Furnishing accessories: DA XIANG Lotus

Design Team Member: Jianyu Jiang, Huaming Yu, Rui Chen

Project Location: Haining, Jiaxing, China

Project Floor Area: 632 ㎡

Project closeout: March 2020 Construction organization: Hangzhou Jutie Decoration

Photographer: Haha Lu

Press Distribution: v2com

About DA XIANG Design Studio

DA XIANG Design Studio started in Hangzhou in 1999, the team focuses on the design of boutique restaurants, hotels, and cultural buildings in the aesthetic context of Linquan①, and also the practice and research of furnishings design. DA XIANG has committed to the expression of space artistic conception under the background of Oriental culture, emphasizing the integration of space and environment and advocating the balance between space aesthetics and commercial.

Design philosophy: Inspired by Linquan, and learn from nature, return to inner peace and tranquility.

This is a close look at one of the house's hallways that has a round window that lets in natural lighting and a view of the landscape.

This is a closer look at the round window showcasing the landscape outside as well as the potted plants and covered walkways.

This is a close look at the covered walkway on the side of the pool and the glass wall of the house exterior.

This side of the house exterior showcases the firepit, conversation pit and the pool on the far side.

This is a closer look at the indoor swimming pool with a large skylight above that brings in an abundance of natural lighting.

This other view of the swimming pool shows the glass walls of the house on the far side as well as the wooden deck walkway.

This is an interior view of the house that has a large corner panel with Oriental designs.

This is a close look at the dining room that has a large round dark wooden dining table surrounded by gray cushioned chairs.

This is a closer look at the large round dark wooden dining table that stands out against the lighter wooden tones of the walls.

This is a closer look at the paneled wall of the interior that has a serene Oriental landscape design.

The living room has a modern fireplace on the far side that warms the sofa set surrounding the round white coffee table.

The mirrored panel of the wall in this angle doubles the size of the living room and gives an illusion of having two sofas.

This is the formal dining room of the house that looks more like a conference room with its large dark wooden rectangular dining table and a large TV on the far wall.

The large wooden dining table of the formal dining room is only a few steps away from the pool area through the glass doors.

This is a nighttime view of the swimming pool that has its own ethereal lighting to complement the house exterior.

This is a covered walkway within the house with frosted glass panels on one side and trellises above.

This is a look down the staircase of the house from the vantage of the second-level landing showcasing light banisters and large glass window.

This is an aerial view of the house exterior showcasing the bright exterior walls and glass windows as well as a large rooftop outdoor area.

This is an aerial view of the house showcasing the various outdoor areas of the house as well as the roofs.

The transition of the city is a complicated process. Along with the old memories gradually gone, new emotions are constantly being generated. When production breaks through itself and has more connections with life, the vision of the garden will continue.

The project is located in the Xucun Industrial Zone, Haining, Jiaxing, in which the architect built an elegant courtyard on the roof of a factory and named it Xiaoya. In this courtyard, the functions of reception, catering, and office are combined. And it has broken through the single working mode and expanded the breadth and depth of life.

How to deal with the relationship between architecture and environment has to be the first research focus of the design. The place is adjacent to the main road of the city, and there are many self-built houses in the surrounding countryside. So the designer uses green plants as walls to shield from the noise on the road and disorder of vision, which has embodied the concept of oriental gardens by modern garden methods and created an atmosphere of being in the city but like a wild place.

They utilize the natural sightline deviations of the roof platform to balance the surrounding axis, and the phototaxis of the biological instinct to allow the viewer to do the natural selection. The architecture is opened, and the interior and exterior spaces are infiltrated with each other, both spacious and enclosed.

The corridor design overlaps with the tourist line, which leads the free ramble mode to become an opportunity for interaction between people and the site. The delight of the stroll is the purpose of the landscape design. It is expected that people will walk barefoot. With the changes in texture and temperature of wood, stone, rock, and sand, they will touch the nerves of the footsteps, during which people will return to purity.

In the eyes of Mies Van Der Rohe, the barrier is no longer the antonym of the transparent but creates one more space and one more possibility. Inspired by this, the corridors twist and turn volatile and extend in the open backyard of Xiaoya, where the white wall penetrates into the field of vision, but part of the landscape emerges from behind, and the geometric espalier hides the end of the corridor and played a “Cloze Play Thinks” with the brain.

There are two water courtyards. The central one takes a view of the sky and takes the water as a mirror. The shadow is refracted into the restaurant and meeting room, and the fold-up water landscape continues to extend indoors.

In The Book of Songs·Xiaoya·Deer Bell, stirred up the feelings by deer bell and eating grass. It shows the way of hospitality and the mind to entertain the guests, by utilizing which the designer creates a resonance between people and space. The squeezing and dislocation of the building create a series of wonderful corner spaces. Behind the “cloudy pine forest” painting that landed like a screen in the lobby was a small deer that came out of the probe.

The elements of the grille are used one after another in the place. Make space becomes an alienated sundial and combines the sunlight. Mottled shadows which change along with the time, like clouds and fog, like electric light, which lets the “rime” sway and flow.

The beauty of oriental gardens is that they can use rockery, bridges, ponds, and other micro-landscapes and micro-ecologies to imply the intention of yearning for rivers and nature, which is called Die Shan Li Shui (Rockery-Pile And Water-Scenery-Building① ).

Xiaoya uses the concept of oriental gardens to create a western garden landscape that incorporates geometric patterns, vegetation, architecture, and water features, etc, which uses simple cubes to summarize the combination of the natural stones laying, cascade and the fold-up of the sceneries, which forms a unified visual element.

In the meeting room, the view is divided by vertical walls. Then the view of the left eye is a spacious outdoor space, and the right is an enclosed meeting space. The view outside the window of the living room in the lounge area is cleverly reflected by the mirror to the dining person, which makes the water courtyard, pine, and the bamboo in the corners outside the window all visible to the eye.

When the sky gets a bit dark, you can see the interior through the light and shadow on the glass, and see the opposite view through the rear window, which is mellow and interesting.