Sited in Shijingshan, the fringe of Beijing, near the scared Western Hills, the Wuliepoch Life Experiment Center is a sales office for low rise residential developments at the foot of Western Hills. The projects draws upon the heritage and inspirations of Western Hills, and presents a new definition for housing in contemporary Chinese metropolis.

The project encompasses a 1500sm of sales center and a 400sm of community skating rink, as a way to response to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The sales office a includes model exhibition area, sample rooms, seating areas, bar and catering, a VIP lounge, staff offices, etc.

The two elements essential to the Vitruvian Primitive Hut－the origin of house－are hearth and shelter; walking around the hearth beneath the shelter is a daily ritual in life. The same ritual exists in religious architecture, where there is a scared path surrounding a locus or subjects for worshiping. Faith and ritual are indispensable to a house. As the presentation of house, the project draws upon the religious ambience in a house and develops a revolving circulation logic accordingly to connects the programs together. The architecture has the visitor experienced Western Hills in a new way that landscape evolves around architecture endlessly, pretty much reassembles the incarnation in life.

As the geometry of the site is triangulated, the project responses by stacking layers of curve walls one on top of the other, in a crisscrossing way to create layers of courtyard or intermediate spaces leading to the building, some demarcations of space are horizontal walls suspended in the air. To have a dialogue with the Great Wall scenery nearby and to maintain the heritage of courtyard housing in Beijing, the materiality of the project expresses through carefully proportioned masonry walls throughout architecture and landscape, to give a uniform tone and create a historic gravitas for the project.

We place three axises on the site. While the first axis aligns with the street, the second axis points towards Badachu Monastery, and the third axis directs to Fragrance Hill Mountain. The three axises divide up the street front of the site, and various scales of landscape areas and court yard spaces are formed. Along the path of circulation, a ramp connects programs of urban exhibition area, tea bar, bar, kid’s area and skating rink together. The ramp continues to spiral up to the VIP room and the Mock-up exhibition area on the second floor. The visitors can get an oversee of the skating rink from the ramp and also the VIP room. Spaces are connected in section. From the VIP room, the path goes on hovering on the rooftop terrace, where spectacular views of the scared Western Hills awaits.

The non-divided spiral organization of interior space makes space permeable and penetrable. The gradually slopped floor echoes with the “inverted Western Hills,” expressed by the curved array of ceiling panels. The signature image of “autumn foliage in Western Hills” is depicted the field of glittering wooden coat aluminum panels. The array of ceiling panels change color from warm yellow to white, suggesting the transition from entrance to skating ring.

The wall material of the space is consistence with the floor, and the transition between interior and exterior is smooth and subtle. Space flow from one area to the other, with the panorama of Western Hills as the backdrop for the public program.

Client: Sino Ocrean Real Estate
Architects: Atelier Alter Architects PLLC
Partners in Charge: YingFan Zhang, Xiaojun Bu
Design Team: YingFan Zhang, Xiaojun Bu, Ping Jiang, Wei Huang, Zhenwei Li, Ran Yan, Lairong Zheng, Jue Wang, Leilei Ma, Bo Huang, Chuan Qin, Lianhua Liu, Chunyu Cao, Jiang Wu, Weicong Lin
Structure: Beijing Saturni Engineering Consultant Co., Ltd. - Qing Zuo, Duomin Wang, Bin Ma, Yue Yu
MEP: Gong Cheng, Zhenwei Li
Landscape Design: LANDAU International Design
FF&E: Design Republic
Lighting design: Beijing Guanghu Purilighting Co., Ltd.
General contractor: Sino Ocrean Real Estate
Interior contractor: SDCIC Construction Group Co., Ltd.
Curtain wall construction: Sino Ocrean Real Estate
Landscape construction: Sunshine Landscape
Cost: 40 million
Area: 2880㎡
Location: Beijing, China
Year: 2018
Photography: Highlite Images, Atelier Alter Architects
Images: Courtesy of Atelier Alter Architects