The famous RiZhao green tea belt, with its impressive landscape, is the unusual scenario for this private vacation house. The plot area is located on a cliff surrounded by three high mountains and it directly faces to the tea plantations that draw charming paths through the valley until the horizon, offering a typical Chinese nature feeling. So the was clear to both designers and client from the very beginning: to realize an architecture able to find a perfect harmony with this flourishing and sinuous landscape.

The first step to achieve the goal was to search for spaces related to the Chinese landscape design tradition. Then, after learning from the SuZhou garden philosophy and studying the bridges form, as well as the z-path corridors spaces, the results were a volume and an interiors layout that can be recounted starting from two main concepts: let the building become part of the nature and the nature part of the building. The first one has driven the building design, the second one the interior design.
 

LANDSCAPE TO ARCHITECTURE

This building is like a rock: it is a natural hard element deeply rooted in the ground and stretched out to the valley. The Z architectural volume grows from the cliff like a stone in the landscape. Half of the spaces are hidden and protected inside the mountain, while the others are cantilevering over the cliff.

To reach the house from the west side, the guests must walk through the chestnut tree forest reaching a hidden entrance located at the end of a natural path. From the east side a road provides a car access. The architectural stone coated volume is suspended over a transparent layer that ensures a great view to all the ground floor’s green areas.

Between the main volume and the east wing of the building there is an enclosed yard: a protected space that acts as pivot of all public spaces placed at the ground floor and it also allows a more private access to the nature. From this space is still possible to have a really good view of the valley, thanks to the different height between the living room and the courtyard.
 

ARCHITECTURE TO LANDSCAPE

The interior spaces perception is focused on two points:

1) An inside-inside space visual connection, where a chain of linked public rooms allows a visual connection between all the spaces of the floor.

2) An inside-outside landscape visual connection, that is possible because all the spaces have a viewpoint of the landscape.

In particular the yard and the office area in the back side are raised up over the living-dining area and the tea room: in this way, the backyard spaces have a theatrical view to the landscape in the west-south side. Thanks to an open transparent folding door system, from the main living room, the dining room and the swimming pool it's possible to experience a dramatic relation with the surrounding, offering an incredible view of the green valley and the mountain nearby.

The villa is made by a complex composition of comfortable spaces where landscape, sky, mountains and water are linked together in order to offer a unique perception.

Typology: vacation house

Dimension: 1800 sqm

Location: ShangDong RiZhao|China

Status : built

Completion: 2013