Beijing, China
Category: Mixed-Use Buildings Year: 2021 Architects: IAPA Pty. Ltd Lead Architect: Paul Bo Peng Design Team: Paul Bo Peng, Yu Ding, Yang Yang, Ye Jia Wei, Wei Shi Bing, Peng Ying, Zhang Qian Qian, Lin Jia Shan, Chen Yang, and Liu Dong Po Client: The Mother Earth Happiness Group Contractor: Jiangsu Hongsheng Construction Engineering Group Co., LTD Photographers: Dison Mo
Calm Hill is located in Beijing, at the foot of the Great Wall. The client wanted the building to be a site that could exhibit an attitude of “Giving time back to life” and create a serene lifestyle.
Given the geographic location of the site, introvert architecture is the common form, however, the client wished to have some degree of extrovert architecture to demonstrate an attitude of lifestyle, and how to balance these two forms is the point of the design.
The architects desired to break the conventional exhibition mode of conveying information by simply showing objects or pictures. They used locally sourced materials, such as charred timber, mao-bamboo, and schist stone which represent the local culture. The material complements the building and creates an environment with rich perspectives of immersive, multi-sensory experience.
The 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 stories in their minds.
The concept of “half” allowed architecture and landscape to be divided into two parts, following the credo that 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 spikes. The diagonal wall is a composite strip of openings, it has provoked people’s curiosity and attracted people back inside to find out what is happening.
This is what the team hopes 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.
