Text description provided by the architects. This house is the home of a couple with three children, a family with deep nostalgia for the countryside. It locates in an evergreen valley in Dongguan, China. The site is surrounded by mountain on three sides, the mouth of the valley looks to a forest of fruit trees, the hazy mountains sits as background far away. The house using light-wood construction, the building is made of modified wood, extremely durable in wet and humid conditions in Southern China.

Living Room Section

The entry point of this design is to define the relationship between Nature, Manmade nature and Artifact. The volume was divided into individual living units, surrounding a courtyard while defined by which as two groups. The building groups forms two interface of living platform which devides the land into three gardens.

Life penetrates through these different layers. Bedrooms scattered in different places around the courtyard, serving as private spaces of each family member. These private rooms are connected by different public rooms, each having windows facing the south. Leading by two main public rooms—living room and dinning room, the private and public rooms forms two rows of volumes. Corners, shadows, alleys come from the shifting and scattering of different units.

Modern society detach Man from nature, while Man instinctively produce the urge to return to it. For this family, returning to land does not mean that we should totally negate cities. It is not their intention that they should stay away from modern cities. They are only trying to distinguish the part in civilized society that invades the original relations of human and nature.

© Kayan Chow

• Architects

  Credohus

• Location

  Dongguan, China

• Category

  Houses

• Lead Architects

  Fangzhou Song

• Design Team

  Xiaoxin Yin, Yinghua Wen, Jiancong Luo, Cihang Wang

• Design Consultant

  Espen Tharaldsen, Sverre Oystein Woxen, Ole Rasmus Nygaard

• Clients

  private client

• Area

  380.0 m2

• Project Year

  2017

• Photographs

  Kayan Chow