Text description provided by the architects. Recently, in China, there are more and more innovation projects rather than new buildings, and the theme of these projects are changing from city to rural area. But the rural area are no longer just traditional villages, essentially, they are more like villages from the city dwellers’ viewpoint and to satisfy city dwellers’ imagination.

Bird view. Image

Under this circumstance, village B&B hotel turns out to be a very convenient architecture type for city life to intervene in village development. What it can achieve is city dwellers’ imagination of village life. In this project, the core issue for us is how to renovate the building into a classical Chinese garden for city dwellers to escape from their city life, and create a “un-city” experience from city dwellers’ view.

Courtyard along south side pool. Image

Square and main entrance. Image

This project sits at Guojiagou village, Tianjin. The site is at the center of the village, both the north side and south side of the site have a small pool, on the west side is a hill, and east side is the main village area. Between the main village area and the site, there is a big square and the main road, all the village roads are distributed in fan shape and centered to the site.

Center courtyard. Image

The existing buildings are a group of single floor buildings with grey tiles sloping roof and black bricks supported structure. We maximized the existing circumstance, maintained and emphasized the main structure of existing building, based on this strategy, we introduced in steel structures, white cubes, glazed walls, wooden grilling, and other modern materials to achieve a balance between new and old.

Lobby. Image

Plan

Corridor and dooryard. Image

We use outdoor corridors as semi interior space tool to connect all isolated existing buildings and change them into a single building with strong inner relationship. Then, we use new walls and new volumes to change public spaces between buildings and along pools into private spaces as inner courtyards, dooryards or rooms.

Guest room. Image

Section

Courtyard along north side pool. Image

The process of entering every single room is from public space to semi public space then to private space, as a series of experience like wandering in classical Chinese gardens. The originally private center courtyard was changed into a center public space surrounded by tearoom, lobby, main entrance, and restaurant, this new center courtyard connected the square and hill belongs to the villagers and can be shared by the guest and villagers together as a public center.

Courtyard along south side pool. Image © Lei Mao

• Architects

  Monolith Architects

• Location

  Guojiagou Village, Xiaying Town, Ji County, Tianjin, China

• Category

  Renovation

• Architect in Charge

  Lei Mao, Xiaoju Liao

• Design Team

  Ke Sun, Zhe Peng

• Client & Construction

  Beijing Luoqi Cultural Tourism Development Co., Ltd

• Area

  1069.0 m2

• Project Year

  2018

• Photographs

  Lei Mao, Gang Wang