Our Home of the Week is Shanglin Lake, Hangzhou, China.
Varied arrangements of seven-home clusters combine to create eight different building types throughout the site. This variation creates different massing and a different facade for each building, resulting in a playful and interesting street scene.
The principal body of the cluster forms around a grand central sunken courtyard, which provides the opportunity for Southern orientation while creating a sense of intimacy for each home.
Vehicular and pedestrian circulation is separated, with the garages at sub-level offering direct connection from each home. The complex cluster configuration is resolved with simple floor plans.
At entry levels, all rooms open onto one another to achieve an easy flow throughout the plan. The building mass breaks up and reduces on second and third floors to create more privacy between each home as well as more interesting massing.
Single-story gateways announce the entrance to private entry courtyards and exterior stairs to sunken gardens. The sunken courtyard is treated as a common garden, heavily landscaped with a series of colonnades on all sides that emphasize the Spanish character of the buildings and provide maximum privacy for each plan.
Although the basic mass and details are traditional Spanish style, the simple proportions of the rooms and the large scale of the windows make this very much a building of today’s time. Carefully arranged Juliet balconies reduce the apparent size of the main mass. Asymmetrical shed and gable roofs, iron-work grills, mosaic tile surrounds, and modern vertical proportions all suggest the Andalusian influence.
Project Team
Architect: Bassenian Lagoni
Builder: Zhejiang Leshan Engineering Construction Ltd. Co.
Interior Designer: Bassenian Lagoni
Developer: Zhejiang Shanglin Lake Real Estate Development Ltd
Land Planner: Bassenian Lagoni
