Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China
Inspired by the mountains, clouds, and an appreciation of the everyday, the Vanke Cloud Valley Project Display Area designed by Yu Ting of Wutopia Lab for Xuzhou Vanke has recently been completed in Jiangsu Province of China, near Shanghai.
“I do not have the strength to be a trash can, nor am I qualified to be a wish box, I just want to be an ordinary person, to be comforted and loved by others.”
— Honoré de Balzac
When the architect received the call inviting him to design this project, he was in the mountains on a land grant, where he learned that the land was on the border between the old and new city in the northernmost city of Jiangsu.
The client hoped that he would create a different kind of demonstration center at this narrow junction.
Considering the grand history of a city is a cliché for architects.
For example, the site is located in the hometown of Liu Bang, the birthplace of Han culture, near a major transportation hub, a coal mining and energy base, and the decisive Huaihai Battle.
But these narratives cannot conceal the loss and anxiety of the city and blurs the more tangible joys and sorrows of ordinary people.
During the Quarantine, the designer had a quick thought: he wanted to design a building on this border that could show the different living conditions of ordinary people.
To be able to see different ordinary people showing their scenes of lives in a street of daily banal, without grand narrative.
Each scene is a stage in a play.
The architecture is constituted by those stages, which becomes a theater, where any ordinary person can perform.
It is not the ambition of the city that matters, but the everyday.
The design goal became to create a set of stages on the border of the old and new city, with ordinary people as the main characters.
The performance is about their own lives in all aspects.
Although the site is a prototype city, the actual buildable land restrictions are very high.
After meeting various planning and fire-proof conditions, the narrow trapezoidal building site within the building setback line is about 500 square meters, and the height limit of the structure cannot exceed three floors.
The total construction area of the prototype, including two sets of sample houses, is only more than 1000 square meters.
This small demonstration area center has no extra floor space as a stage for people to perform.
When function and façade are not disconnected, the design of the façade becomes irrelevant.
By re-analyzing the programs and circulations of Vanke’s sales center, the designers categorized them differently.
They merged the core and communal space and defined it as a big “noisy” space that flows through three floors.
The audio-visual hall, sandbox area, office, model room, tearoom, coffee, meeting, negotiation, signing, VIP reception, indoor garden and other rooms are independent as “quiet” small boxed-shape plug-ins attached to the big space according to the flow line in turn.
One can recognize these stacked boxes on the façade and see part of the flowing “noise” in the gaps of the boxes.
The plug-ins have large windows or balconies in reference to the stage.
A set of side stages that do not occupy floor space appears on the façade.
The box on the façade is no longer just a box, but a scene that shows “a scene from daily life”.
When they are stacked together, the demonstration area becomes a monument to the daily life of ordinary people.
While investigating the site, the designers noticed a line of mountains that appeared steeply in the distance of the normally unrecognizable interface.
This unexpectedly concrete and natural green mountain became the inspiration of the design.
In order to avoid the 3-story height limit that would turn this “mountain” into a flat roof, the designers continued to use boxes on the roof to form a stepped “mountain” look.
Originally, each box was a platform where guests could walk up the steps to the top, where they could look around and appreciate the beauty of the landscape.
However, because of the restrictions of the “roofing platform” and “roofing without people” on the height limit, as well as the floor area and strict cost control, the boxes shaping the summit could only be turned into a pavilion.
Although it is not possible to pace from the ground to the top of the hill, it is a perfect way to conceal the equipment on the roof.
The mountain of the prototype area consists of two parts, the building itself and the pavilion, including the fire stairs attached to the building.
The former creates a solid volume through solid metal panels and glass, while the latter creates an imaginary form with perforated aluminum panels.
The real and the imaginary complement each other to form the monument mountain of mortal life.
After accepting the proposal, the client commented, “It reminds people of the cloud of data.”
By reflecting the city’s positioning “City of High Technology,” the work becomes communicative through multiple interpretations.
The image created by the architecture through the interpretation and sanctification of ordinary people’s daily life is actively given the symbolic meaning and becomes a double declaration of daily and monumental, a “mountain of ideal life” for ordinary people who commemorate the present and every day of the future.
Project: Vanke Cloud Valley Project Display Area
Architects: Wutopia Lab
Lead Architect: Yu Ting
Project Administration: Huang He
Project Architect: Xia Yanming
Design Team: Xu Yunfang, Lin Jianming (Intern)
Structural Consultant: Miu Binhai
Construction Drawing: Jiangsu Jiuding Jiahe Engineering Design & Consulting Co., Ltd.
Construction Design Team: Cao Zhenguo, Lu Yang, Zhang Xuran, Song Fang, Zhang Lu
Development: Xuzhou Vanke Enterprise Co., Ltd .
Client’s Design Team: Sun Chunsheng, Li Xin, Gao Yanrui, Tong Jinghai, Zhu Na, Xu Xiaojian, Zhu Yi
Landscape Design: Atelier Scale
Lighting design: bpi
Photographers: Liang Junhao
