This project is a warehouse, storing materials for flood control, on Dongtaihu Lake border, Suzhou, China.
Site dimension: 5475㎡
Plot ratio:0.25
Total building area: 1379.02㎡
Warehouse area:839㎡
Administrative area:540㎡
Parking: 4 cars
Landscape area:4746㎡
The main job to the architects was to get the boundaries between nature, architecture and time, to avoid the changing of the original lakeside landscape and ecology by building the warehouse. The solution is " Natural wisdom " which made the warehouse "growing" with the lakeside environment, by time. What the architects want to deliver is something appropriate and sustainable. Design techniques were:
1. Location: Maximum concealment. The site is driven in by a small branch of the roadway along the shore, separated from the main leisure landscape green land along the lakeside by a small river. Such location ensure the maximum degree of preservation of the lakeshore landscape, the minimum degree of changing. Whether from the lakeshore, or from the middle of the lake, this location is the most concealed sight of the landscape.
2. Construction: Buried, above the flood level line. We sink the warehouse below the ground, but ensure that the indoor leveling is above the flood alert level in Dongtaihu Lake. The warehouse is covered with soil, and the management room achieves the necessary lighting and ventilation through several small skylights and a sunken inner courtyard window. The sunken courtyard is connected to the external ground through a bridge that climbs slowly outwards. The structure of the warehouse is like a "small tent".
3. Growth: Time makes hiding more natural. After the green roof covering soil and the surrounding landscape grew by time, it made the warehouse and surrounding environment more integrated with the environment of the lakeside landscape. The warehouse is hidden by grasslands, trees and flowers.
Team Members:
Shaofeng Li, Sulin Chen, Fang Chen, Huaida Yan, Ying Wang, Yifan Tang, Kai Zhu