Articles by Yu Xin Li

From townscape composed of brightly colored corrugated steel panels and gray concrete roofs to the brown mountains with sparse green trees, the Liulin Town, like many other small towns in Central China, looks like a seemingly noisy place in disorder, yet with a certain vigorous vitality. The church on the hill, although its sloping cylindrical outline and towering spire can only be glimpsed from a distance, it appears peaceful and silent, overlooking the whole town below, while the town looks up at the church from below.

The project is located in Qiyunshan Town, Anhui Province, a 1-hour drive from the renowned Mount Huangshan. In this small village with about 2000 local residents, tourism is not highly developed. There is only one newly built hotel with a small number of tourists. Most of them sojourn here since the village is close to Mount Huangshan which is their real destination. Mount Qiyun, two kilometers away, is one of the sacred Taoist Mountains and also a famous scenic spot for its Danxia landform. Around the village, gentle mountains are densely covered with pine trees and there is no mosquito even in summer. As a part of a distributed hotel, our project stands in the pine groves. The client hopes that the hotel rooms are independent of each other and only connected by meandering roads. Hotel rooms of the first phase are delegated to different architects. They share three themes, couple, family, and friend gathering. We designed a couple of suites among them.

2018 China International Garden Expo was held in Nanning, positioned along a river in the city’s hilly outskirts. Interspersed in the southeast section of the site is a series of quarries. The organizing committee hoped to transform seven of the relatively intact quarries into distinctive gardens displaying in the garden expo. The site covers an area of about 33 hectares. Several years had passed since mining at some of the quarries onsite ceased, yet two of the quarries persisted in mining activities until the city won the expo bid. These quarries suffered blasting during the mining that caused fragmented surfaces and rugged landforms at the pit bottom. The site was strewn with dilapidated hills, towering cliffs, deserted land surfaces, bottomless ponds, piles of abandoned soil and gravel, rusty quarrying equipment, etc.

Background. In the early 1990s, Three Gorges Project was launched on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, which finally caused about 1.13 million people moving into new towns. Built in 1992, Yunyang is such a “Migrant Town”. Located on a triangular hillside zone where Yangtze River meets Pengxi River, it sits just aside the bank of Three Gorges Reservoir, whose annual vertical fluctuation is up to 30 meters. Began in 2014, landscape architects firstly completed the overall planning of 33-kilometer’s waterfront public space with a total area of 448 hectares (44% of which are located in the water-level fluctuation zone). Then, the design of the 10-kilometer waterfront space surrounding the city center was proposed, and was eventually completed in 2021.

Xi ‘an City Sports Park, which was built in 2006, is located north of Longshou and close to xi ‘a municipal government. With the 14th National Games to be held in Xi ‘an in 2021 as an opportunity, an exploratory renovation of the Xi’an City Sports Park is underway. 

0/ Project Background
As a typical picturesque Chinese Jiangnan town, the village of Jijiadun locates about 1.5-hour drive from the central city of Shanghai. With the rapid development of urbanization in China, the problem of rural hollowing-out is becoming increasingly serious. In order to revitalize the village, the government of the local rural township invited a team of professionals to re-develop and renovate the village. By introducing the cultural and creative industries into the village while respecting its rural scene and culture, Jijiadun village is attracting “new villagers” from the cities and thus forming a new dynamic rural living community. The project of BAN Villa sits at the entrance of the Jijiadun village. The site is surrounded on three sides by a small river, and there are croplands not far away from the site. 

Inspired by the thrills and experience of a studio sound stage and set but remaining true to the warehouse-style retail culture of HARMAY, we created a store that combines the best of both worlds.  By channeling the power of light, shadow, and the visual impact of cinema, we created a uniquely immersive experience while reflecting the innovation and diversity of the brand.