The motives
Enjoy leisure, be peaceful so that the mind reaches out, be care-free and be far from the dust. The building is named as "ChengRanJu", which comes from a famous paper by a Scholar Cui Xian in the Ming Dynasty and which literally means "worry-free happiness". This state of mind is like those ancient hermits who live in bamboo forests with tranquilities. To sum up, the name of the building implies seeking peace of mind by getting rid of all things flashy.
The origin
The building is located besides a hilly road in a quiet countryside somewhere in the Huzhou city, Zhejiang province, where the mountains are covered by trees, grass, shrubs, and bamboos. This building is the place where we meet our best friends. In our private parties, we enjoy tea or wine with our friends in this folk house, which appears rather small in the green mountain. We have been searching for such a place for half a year, when the idea of opening up a folk hotel came up, everyone supported it.
The plan
The design is based on unifying all functionalities of the building. After meeting the functional requirements and fitting into the evironment, we leave the rest of the freedom to the exterior. Due to the narrowing of the space of the waterfront, we put the main entry to the back of the building. In this way, we not only enhance the privacy of the building but also achieve the harmony between the building and the surroundings. We also create a water system from a mountain creek so that the outside consists of multiple levels of delightful scenaries. The path between the parking lot and the main entrance goes through a shade of bamboo trees. After a few steps and a small distance of wooden road, a guest will find her view widened to a space of water decorated by nearby redwood and grass.
The exterior
The building looks like two crossed squares. With its entrance lower than the ground, the bottom floor of the building has an entrance masquerading as a fun cave and contains three gray segments and two glass sections. The exterior on the upper floor have a different style of mild luxury.
The interior
The first floor is public area, consisting of a meeting room, a Chinese restaurant, a western restaurant, a barbeque restaurant, a chess-and-poker room, and other supply facilities. The second floor hosts the main four guest rooms named as "tea", "bamboo", "mountain", and "creek". Some of the basements serve as wine storages. The main materials of the building are tempered stones, which had been around for a long time and underwent seven complex procedures to appear solid, candid, and sophisticated. The corridor of these four rooms reflects the varying elevations and encirlces a natural fountain in the middle.
The conclusion
Stick to original motives and one gets her dreams fulfilled. This folk house is a symbol of our retreat from the mundane world back to our pristine state of minds.