No. 8 House in Dongnan Village
This is a spring-like all year round Chinese ancient town, people have lived and thrived here for over a thousand years. The Bai people have lived here for generations. Here, anyone who can walk can dance and anyone who can speak can sing. All of he people often hold gatherings. No. 8 House in Dongnan Village is only 2 kilometers away from the square in the center of the ancient town. Every evening, the masters and his friends play shuttlecock on the square.
Traveled between Beijing and Shanghai many times as architect, we have had such a strong and brief experience in that period: what we truly enter is no longer diverse knowledge traditions, but a continuous spatiotemporal context. We are situated within history and also in the daily life of the present moment, seeing the path we have come from.This left us with a belief: the buildings and places that are incredibly real, particularly mundane, yet possess a strong sense of community vision have always existed throughout history.
We began the project with a consensus that people understand the universe before they understand their home and house, and they understand the horizon before they understand where to settle down. We admire the ever-spring-like sunshine and air, inviting the wonderful natural elements such as wind, rain and shadow to coexist with us. We devote all our energy to organizing the various sensitive relationships of time, space, atmosphere and emotion, allowing people to deeply experience different levels of support and coexist with a greater existence. The area of a piece of land and a house can be small, but the buildings and the world are infinite. The house is small, but also big.
Different styles buildings surround and form a meticulously organized front yard complex, which includes sundial tower and yoga and meditation room, book tower and living room, master suite, dining room, six guest rooms and other supporting areas. The garden backyard is another world, featuring a storage room, wine cellar, drying area, woodworking workshop and campsite. The homeowner desires a house where they can live freely.
By "freely", we do not merely mean the arrangement of functional rooms. Instead, it is about the building's posture being able to respond sensitively to individual solitude, collective joy, the rhythm of life, and various daily states. People are living beings, and the most sensitive relationships remain to be organized.
We believe that architecture is also a common language that can convey that in our daily lives, people have the possibility to be aware of their close connection with the natural universe and experience the state of life.
CREDITS
Lead Architects: Wang Yanshi, Bai He
Design Team: Dong Zhiyuan, Liu Yifeng, Zhou Mengzheng, Li Yin/ internship, Wu Jiahui / internship, Chen Jinkai/ internship
Engineering: Gao Xuemei, Li ping/ structural designer
