“Floral Pavilion” and the small railway station are two buildings located not far from one another in Tangshan, Jiangning District, Nanjing. The small train forms part of the park’s transportation system, and the platform we designed is one of many stations along the route. The rest pavilions, meanwhile, provide visitors with toilets, places to rest, and refreshments. There are several of them throughout the park, each with a different theme. The theme of the “Floral Pavilion” is garden plants.

A Simple Station

The station has a very simple program: a platform and a canopy.The primary structure of the canopy consists of a series of frames, each composed of steel columns and timber beams. These frames are structurally independent and can stand on their own, with no secondary beams connecting them. The metal roof is laid directly over the frames, with a narrow strip skylight running along the ridge.

The Initial Image of the “Floral Pavilion”

The core of the  “Floral Pavilion” is a place where people can pause, have a drink, enjoy the garden plants, and take in the surrounding landscape. Our first consideration was how these activities could be brought together to create a coherent overall atmosphere.

The pavilion sits at the bottom of a valley between low hills. This is not a landscape defined by a strong visual focal point. As people move through the hills, what they experience is instead the continuous rise and fall of the terrain as a whole. For this reason, we did not conceive of the pavilion as a viewing device or a frame for a particular scene. Here, the relationship between people and the surrounding landscape is not one of “gazing,” but is more like passing through a river valley by boat——the hills unfold continuously around you as a broad backdrop, while visitors on the deck drink tea, talk with one another, or quietly occupy themselves.

If the pavilion is imagined as a boat, then it is a boat carrying a garden. The hills and the garden are bright, while the places where people rest remain shaded. The nearby garden and the distant hills coexist within the same view, and people move and linger between these two kinds of landscape. This was the initial image.

Removing the Perimeter Columns

Viewed from the surrounding hills, the pavilion has a shape resembling a fish. Its narrower tail contains the toilets. Visitors enter from the tip of the tail and follow a gently curving path toward the resting area.

At the center of the resting area is a garden, and a skylight of the same area above it keeps the garden as bright as the outdoors. The hills on both sides are not high and gradually descend toward the “bow.”We wanted the surrounding scenery to remain as continuous as possible, so that people would feel as if they were on a deck rather than inside a cabin. Rows of columns would weaken this feeling, especially when viewed from the side, where the columns would form a rather dense interface. Moreover, columns have a limit in terms of slenderness ratio and cannot be made too thin. If the entire roof were cantilevered, it would require a very massive structure.

We therefore began discussions with the structural engineer on the premise that tension rods would be placed around the perimeter of the resting area. The basic structural logic was to transfer gravity loads to a ring of timber columns surrounding the central garden. The radial timber beams are tied in two directions, toward the roof ridge and toward the ground, while the lateral forces are resisted by triangular supports located along the centerline of the building.The skylight above the garden already needed to provide drainage, so the triangular skylight structure also became part of the building structure, and some of the roof tie points are located at the top of the skylight. On the outside of the toilet area, conventional timber columns are used for support.

The timber columns surrounding the garden are located at the lowest point of the building’s clear height. Since they are not subjected to lateral forces, we made them all spindle-shaped columns. They surround the garden in a relatively dense arrangement, with sturdy proportions, resembling a small temple. The tension rods around the perimeter are aligned with the joints in the glazing and are visually almost the same width.

Arranging the Heights

Because this is a space where some people look at plants while others sit and rest, we wanted seated and standing people to maintain roughly the same eye level, so all the seats are set at bar-stool height. The garden in the middle is raised accordingly. Directly beneath the garden is the mechanical equipment space, and air-conditioning and fresh air are supplied outward from the bottom of the garden. The raised garden visually connects with the distant hills, and the visitors on the opposite side show only their small heads between these two bands of green.

Architecture, Interior & Landscape Design: genarchitects

Principals in Charge: Xue Zhe, Fan Beilei, Kong Rui

Project Team: Li Ruolan, Liu Yang, Zang Min, Tao Shuting, Wang Shiyu, Liu Jinghuan, Sun Haonan, Liu Weinan, Yang Tianyu

Planting Design: Chen Xi

Structural Consultant: Zhang Zhun/AND Office

Detailed Design of Timber Structure: Zhou Jinjiang, Zhou Qiqi, Ji Wei/Suzhou Crownhomes Co,.Ltd.

Local Design Institute: Wang Chang, Wu Lei, Xiang Bin, Shi Jie, Weng Chen, Zhou Jian, Deng Jinliang, Wu Tao, Weng Zhiyu, Han Hui, Yang Jian/Nanjing Yangtze River Urban Architectural Design Co.,Ltd.

Client: Jiangsu Garden Expo Park Construction and Development Co.,Ltd.

Main Contractor (GC) : China Construction Eighth Engineering Division Co,.Ltd.

Curtain Wall System: Zheng Jincai, Yang Zicai/Rilang Doors and Windows

Stucco: OIKOS

Project Type: New Construction

Function: Public Service Facility

Site Area: 4,275 m²

GFA: 2,050 m²

Design Period: December 2018 – September 2019

Construction Period: July 2019 – April 2021

Completion: April 2021

Project Status: Completed 

Photography: genarchitects, Hou Bowen, Zhang Zhun, Zhou Jinjiang