The term "West River Moon" is derived from Watching the Moon at West River, a poem of Wu Pujia of the Qing Dynasty, which reads "The stream murmurs under stone bridges around the town, For bright moon I await in open ground. Autumn light sheds on pavilion high, Who turns tender in heart at distant sight?”
"Water is the soul of the south of the Yangtze River". If space is the carrier of multi-vocabulary narrative, it is an issue to ponder how to let it participate in the interpretation of the current life and innovate the Gusu life. The design, inspired by the ten scenes of Mudu, takes water as the base, and extracts the six elements of "ancient pine", "fishing boat lights", "animistic rocks", "inclined bridge" and "elm shade" to unfold them in succession in space, opening the prelude to the contemporary poetic life in the south of the Yangtze River.
As for the image presentation, the design, based on the site context, sets the main entrance as a square traffic entry. The large-span steel structure gate featuring integration of architecture and landscape breaks the interface of nature and architecture. Simple straight lines are applied on both sides of the entrance, to create a ritual for homecoming, and maximize the landscape vision. The existing high-quality municipal ancient tree resources are borrowed to improve the image and quality of the display surface.
The gardening techniques of classical gardens are adopted. The corridors enclose on all sides to introduce the crab-eye patio of Suzhou classical gardens, which blends natural and cultural elements to build up natural affinity. Taking the image of “ancient pines breaking through the soil,” the design shapes a pure space with the minimalist modeled pines and the landscape wall. The screen wall takes the Lingyan Mountain Scenery scroll painting to depict the cultural texture of Mudu in the space, which records classical gardens in a courtyard, and realizes the conversion between the inside and outside the site. Turning into the back court, large water reflects the soul of the land in the south of the Yangtze River. The Moon Watching Pavilion serves as the leading role of the landscape, while the inclined bridge works as the guide, accompanied by the gurgling stream. Through the changes of vertical elevation, different scenes are created with the move of the steps, portraying the spiritual connotation of the site, in which returning home is to set the mind at ease.
Finally, the landscape design is extended with the scenes of sustainable growth, and the low carbon concept is taken as the starting point, to preserve as much green area, and highlight the use of green landscape environment to reduce carbon emissions. Most of the vegetation are locally sourced to ensure the survival rate of trees and reduce transport consumption. The demonstration area will later be permanently used as a community to continuously reduce costs and eventually present a landscape of sustainable growth.