Calm Hill Industrial and Cultural House / IAPA PTY. LTD.

Text description provided by the architects. Calm Hill, is located in Beijing, at the foot of the Great Wall. The client hopes the building would be a carrier that could exhibit an attitude of “Giving time back to life” create a serenity lifestyle. Given the geographic location of the site, introvert architecture is the common form, however, the client wishes to have some degree of extrovert architecture to demonstrate an attitude of lifestyle, how to balance these two forms is the point of our design.

We hope to break the conventional exhibition mode of conveying the information by simply showing objects or pictures. We used locally sourced material such as charred timber, mao-bamboo, schist stone which represent the local culture. The material complements the building, creates an environment with rich perspectives of an immersive, multi-sensory experience.

The window holes with different proportions form a combination, connecting people and scenes in the space. The viewers on the other side are attracted by these disordered fragments, and then they have their own wonderful story in their minds.

The concept of “half” allows architecture and landscape to be divided into two parts. Moderate concession, leaving room for each other, is restraint. They nested, infiltrated, connected, balanced, and made everything possible.

Looking back at the building from the middle of the field, the “White House” floats on the rice spike. The diagonal wall is a composite strip of openings, it has provoked people’s curiosity and attracted people back to the inside to find out what is happening.