Less than 2km from Fuyuan Residence’s site lies a newly planned neighborhood, already dotted with numerous new commercial housing buildings. The plot is a house lot surrounded by fields of sesame, with a shallow depression at its center that frequently collects water during the rainy season. The client sought a home that could accommodate both everyday living and gatherings with family and friends, while evoking a sense of “field retreat” (tian yin)—a spatial atmosphere akin to the classical poetic ideal of “opening a window onto fields and gardens”: embedded in the countryside yet quietly introspective. On one side, factories and the emerging urban neighborhood bring noise and a faster pace of life; on the other, the boundless openness of the farmland creates a sense of vastness and solitude. Balancing the tranquility of rural life with the conveniences of contemporary dwelling thus became the central focus of our design thinking.
We envision this residential cluster as deeply embedded within a site embraced by open fields, actively responding to the flows of air, the rhythms of the hills, and the layered information conveyed by the distant landscape. The ensemble should neither stand in isolation amid the fields nor present a static impression that can be “grasped at a single glance.” Instead, as people move through the site and their viewpoints continually shift, the forms and spatial relationships among the buildings should continuously evolve, thereby generating what we describe as a “dynamic architecture” experience.This concept stems from our study of Italian architect Carlo Mollino—particularly his 1947 design of the Chalet del Lago Nero in the Alps, a ski-lift station that seamlessly merges function with poetic expression. Mollino did not merely replicate traditional alpine architecture; rather, he systematically extracted and transformed archetypal forms—such as the baita, grangia, and rascard. Within a single building, he achieved a coexistence of dual identities: the valley-facing side features a conventional double-pitched roof, conveying a sense of grounded solidity, while the mountain-facing side opens toward the landscape with a single-slope roof and a cantilevered terrace, creating a light, forward-thrusting gesture. These contrasting façades are subtly mediated through gradual transitions and unified by an integrated three-part roof geometry. The building’s overall silhouette evokes associations with movement, flight, and dynamic bodily postures.Through an almost collage-like compositional strategy—juxtaposing radically different formal configurations—Mollino created an architecture whose appearance shifts dramatically with the viewer’s changing perspective. This very mutability lies at the heart of “dynamic perception.” The building thus ceases to be a static mass and instead becomes a spatial event that continually “transforms” as one moves around it.
The residential cluster consists of three dwelling units arranged in a U-shape around an elliptical water body formed by a central depression on the site. The building volumes are composed as irregular, interlocking geometric forms, resting on two separate plinths and, together with the water body, enclosing an inward-oriented courtyard. The overall layout follows the natural grain of the site—particularly the meandering form of the watercourse—adopting a gesture that “embraces” the landscape.
Building 1 combines a three-storey main volume oriented along the east–west slope with a single-storey pavilion aligned north–south. Encircling the main block is a perimeter gallery—a spatial device deeply rooted in both Eastern and Western traditions: the yanlang (eaves gallery) in classical Chinese architecture, the engawa (veranda) in Japanese houses, and the loggia in Western classical design, particularly in Italian Renaissance villas.Though culturally distinct, all these forms share a common intention: to establish a sensory threshold between interior and exterior—what might be called “sheltered openness.” Here, wind, light, and sound flow freely, while rain is kept at bay, creating a gentle transition from the open fields into domestic space.In our interpretation, the eaves gallery is absorbed into the interior realm, not as a literal stylistic quotation, but as a reimagined spatial condition—deliberately avoiding overt reference to any single tradition.
Building 2 is aligned along the east–west road, deliberately elongated to extend the experience of viewing it from the outside. It is a single-story structure, flanked and sheltered at both ends by Buildings 1 and 3, and enclosed by an outer courtyard. Its low-slung volume hugs the ground, allowing Building 1 behind it to peek subtly above its roofline.
Building 3 adopts the asymmetrical roof of a Saltbox house to respond to the persistent strong winds from the farmland side. The eastern roof features a long, gentle slope that follows the natural airflow across the open terrain. Viewed from the sesame fields, the building presents a low, receding profile—so much so that the roof itself almost functions as the façade. At its center, the volume steps back; the roof folds down at this recess to form a secondary gable, creating a semi-enclosed courtyard. This indentation serves two purposes: first, it breaks the monotony of an excessively long roofline, introducing a rhythmic “breath” into the composition; second, it increases the building’s exposure to daylight and diversifies the directions of natural light entry. The western roof, by contrast, is steeper, providing lateral structural support to the gentler eastern slope.
The roofs of all three buildings experiment with formal breakthroughs—through combinations, deformations, or hybridizations. Building 1 integrates two gable roofs oriented in different directions, interlocking them into a unified composition. Building 2 partially extends its roof beyond the conventional ridge line, creating a large opening that functions as a framed view of the landscape. Building 3 responds to the site’s prevailing wind patterns: one side hugs the ground with a low-slung profile, while the other rises steeply.In each case, the roof overhangs significantly beyond the building’s wall boundaries. This serves both practical and poetic purposes: it protects the timber structure from moisture and decay, while also concealing the junction between beams and walls within deep shadow. The relationship between roof and wall is deliberately loosened—sometimes through linear clerestory windows that create a visual suggestion of suspension; sometimes through transparent glass gables that blur the boundary between inside and outside; and at other times through apertures cut into the ridge, where light and void intensify the sense of the building lifting away from the earth.Ultimately, the roof appears to break free from the constraints of the solid mass beneath, hovering above the fields in an open, graceful gesture that responds to the vastness of the surrounding landscape. These transformed roofs enter into a visual dialogue with one another, forming a continuous, rhythmic silhouette that echoes the way wind flows over hills—evoking the very same spirit embodied in Carlo Mollino’s Chalet del Lago Nero, as previously described. In harmony with the rhythms of rural life, they generate a landscape-inflected cadence and a human-scaled intimacy.
To achieve the exaggerated roof overhangs, a hybrid steel-and-timber structural system was adopted: along the ridge direction, steel beams carry the primary span, their sections concealed within interior walls, while shorter-span purlins supporting local roof segments are made of square timber. This ensures that both the exposed interior timber elements and the cantilevered components in the semi-outdoor gray spaces exhibit a warm, tactile wooden grain. This dual strategy of material and construction not only fulfills the technical demands of long spans but also sustains a sensory dialogue between the building and its natural surroundings through the intimacy of natural textures.
Window design emerged as a core strategy for transcending traditional rural typologies and achieving a distinctly contemporary sensibility. We drew inspiration from Juhani Pallasmaa’s The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses: “When we glimpse a landscape through a window incidentally, or catch the texture of a wall in our peripheral vision, our connection to the environment becomes the most authentic and intimate.” This insight led us to abandon the pursuit of a monumental, frontal composition in favor of fragmented “glimpses” that shape perception.Windows are freely arranged across façades facing the open fields in various directions: wedge-shaped apertures carve dynamic angles of light and shadow; horizontal ribbon windows extend the depth of the view; linear clerestory openings draw in skylight; and small square or decorative windows weave subtle visual rhythms at close range. As mediators, these openings bring in fragments of light and landscape, transforming the building into a vessel for sensory narratives—its character not defined by a grand, singular statement, but through an ongoing dialogue between windows and walls, turning fleeting glances into a continuous, unfolding experience.
