1. Home
  2. /
  3. Office Buildings
  4. /
  5. Courtyard Xiaoya by DA XIANG Design Studio

Courtyard Xiaoya by DA XIANG Design Studio

Project name:
Courtyard Xiaoya
Architecture firm:
DA XIANG Design Studio
Location:
Haining, Jiaxing, China
Photography:
Haha Lu
Principal architect:
Jianyu Jiang, Huaming Yu, Rui Chen
Design team:
Jianyu Jiang, Huaming Yu, Rui Chen
Collaborators:
Built area:
632 ㎡
Site area:
Design year:
2019
Completion year:
2020
Interior design:
DA XIANG Design Studio
Landscape:
DA XIANG Design Studio
Structural engineer:
Environmental & MEP:
Construction:
Hangzhou Jutie Decoration
Supervision:
Visualization:
Tools used:
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom
Material:
Client:
Private
Status:
Built
Typology:
Commercial › Office

The Hangzhou-based practice DA XIANG Design Studio has recently completed Courtyard Xiaoya, located in the Xucun Industrial Zone, Haining, Jiaxing, in which the architect built an elegant courtyard on the roof of a factory and named it Xiaoya.

Architect's statement: The transition of the city is a complicated process. Along with the old memories gradually gone, new emotions are constantly being generated. When production breaks through itself and has more connections with life, the vision of the garden will continue.

The project is located in the Xucun Industrial Zone, Haining, Jiaxing, in which the architect built an elegant courtyard on the roof of a factory and named it Xiaoya. In this courtyard, the functions of reception, catering, and office are combined. And it has broken through the single working mode and expanded the breadth and depth of life.

factory office with courtyard and pool image © Haha Lu

How to deal with the relationship between architecture and environment has to be the first research focus of the design. The place is adjacent to the main road of the city, and there are many self-built houses in the surrounding countryside. So the designer uses green plants as walls to shield from the noise on the road and disorder of vision, which has embodied the concept of oriental gardens by modern garden methods and created an atmosphere of being in the city but like a wild place.

aerial view of the street road with cars image © Haha Lu

They utilize the natural sightline deviations of the roof platform to balance the surrounding axis, and the phototaxis of the biological instinct to allow the viewer to do the natural selection. The architecture is opened, and the interior and exterior spaces are infiltrated with each other, both spacious and enclosed.

inner courtyard with pool image © Haha Lu

The corridor design overlaps with the tourist line, which leads the free ramble mode to become an opportunity for interaction between people and the site. The delight of the stroll is the purpose of the landscape design. It is expected that people will walk barefoot. With the changes in texture and temperature of wood, stone, rock, and sand, they will touch the nerves of the footsteps, during which people will return to purity.

black tiles for outdoor use image © Haha Lu

In the eyes of Mies Van Der Rohe, the barrier is no longer the antonym of the transparent but creates one more space and one more possibility. Inspired by this, the corridors twist and turn volatile and extend in the open backyard of Xiaoya, where the white wall penetrates into the field of vision, but part of the landscape emerges from behind, and the geometric espalier hides the end of the corridor and played a “Cloze Play Thinks” with the brain.

wooden decked terrace image © Haha Lu

There are two water courtyards. The central one takes a view of the sky and takes the water as a mirror. The shadow is refracted into the restaurant and meeting room, and the fold-up water landscape continues to extend indoors.

In The Book of Songs·Xiaoya·Deer Bell, stirred up the feelings by deer bell and eating grass. It shows the way of hospitality and the mind to entertain the guests, by utilizing which the designer creates a resonance between people and space. The squeezing and dislocation of the building create a series of wonderful corner spaces. Behind the "cloudy pine forest" painting that landed like a screen in the lobby was a small deer that came out of the probe. 

corridor image © Haha Lu

The elements of the grille are used one after another in the place. Make space becomes an alienated sundial and combines the sunlight. Mottled shadows which change along with the time, like clouds and fog, like electric light, which lets the "rime" sway and flow.

circular opening in the wall image © Haha Lu

The beauty of oriental gardens is that they can use rockery, bridges, ponds, and other micro-landscapes and micro-ecologies to imply the intention of yearning for rivers and nature, which is called Die Shan Li Shui (Rockery-Pile And Water-Scenery-Building① ).

Xiaoya uses the concept of oriental gardens to create a western garden landscape that incorporates geometric patterns, vegetation, architecture, and water features, etc, which uses simple cubes to summarize the combination of the natural stones laying, cascade and the fold-up of the sceneries, which forms a unified visual element.

parquet floor image © Haha Lu

In the meeting room, the view is divided by vertical walls. Then the view of the left eye is a spacious outdoor space, and the right is an enclosed meeting space. The view outside the window of the living room in the lounge area is cleverly reflected by the mirror to the dining person, which makes the water courtyard, pine, and the bamboo in the corners outside the window all visible to the eye.

meeting table with chairs image © Haha Lu

When the sky gets a bit dark, you can see the interior through the light and shadow on the glass, and see the opposite view through the rear window, which is mellow and interesting.

office meeting room image © Haha Lu

staircase with wall handrails image © Haha Lu

Chinese wall image © Haha Lu

conference room with TV on the wall image © Haha Lu

garden view from conference roomimage © Haha Lu

cozy living room with fireplace image © Haha Lu

living room design with fireplace image © Haha Lu

circular columns image © Haha Lu

pool with lighting at night image © Haha Lu

exterior facade of the building image © Haha Lu

Connect with the DA XIANG Design Studio


By Naser Nader Ibrahim

Share on: