Kunming, Yunnan Province, China

Next to the Yisiqiao Reservoir in the suburb of Chenggong District, Kunming City, the terraced Expanded Cloud Experience Center by Shanghai Urban Architecture Design for Yunnan Health & Cultural Tourism Investment & Development Co., Ltd. integrates gracefully into its sloping site.

For its inspired integration with its surroundings, Expanded Cloud Experience Center has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

The surrounding environment of the building’s site is quiet and boasts beautiful natural resources. 

The site has an elevation difference of more than 10 meters, and the 3-story building volume was conceived to subtly solve this. 

Instead of unfolding the building parallel to the lake, the design team followed the site’s elevation difference to organize the layout according to it, thereby making the building horizontally “grow” out of the slope.

Visitors are immersed in the beautiful scenery from a distant lake to the near waterscape. 

Several terraces were built toward the waterscape from both sides to blend with the natural environment.

While walking down from the top floor to the bottom level, visitors can experience the transition from architectural space to natural space. 

The transitional spaces, terraces, and covered corridors are for various visitor activities.

The interior spaces are connected by the central landscape staircase. 

The external covered corridors, terraces, and glass curtain walls help link the interior and outside spaces and bring the outdoor landscapes into the interior. 

The integrated design of large overhanging eaves and wooden structures ensures the completeness and stability of the overall construction. 

The project utilizes natural materials, such as red cedar matchboard cladding at the bottom of the eaves and stones on the north facade, presenting both rough and gentle natural textures.

The project uses wooden elements for the interior design and retains the existing trees for landscape design. 

The design adopted a wooden structure on the top floor and a steel structure on the lower two levels. 

The wooden structure realizes a large-span column-free space, orderly curved beams, and five-meter-long overhanging eaves, integrating it with the environment, while the steel structure achieves the “growing” building form and overhanging eaves and is also able to resist magnitude 8.5 earthquakes. 

All efforts for this project were intended to create an ideal natural building and explore the relationship between architecture and nature.

Project: Expanded Cloud Experience Center
Architects: Shanghai Urban Architecture Design Co., Ltd.
Design Team: Chen Wenhao, Li Peng, Chen Lei, Shan Nvyi, Wang Tingting, and Wang Xiaoyan
General Contractor: YCIH No.6 Construction Co., Ltd.
Client: Yunnan Health & Cultural Tourism Investment & Development Co., Ltd.
Photographers: ZYStudio