Text description provided by the architects
Sunac Yinghu Shili is a premium residential development in the Caijia core of Beibei District, Chongqing, served by two metro lines and close to the city centre. The landscape was designed by GVL Yi Jing Design Group and built by Chongqing Yuxi Landscape Group; the 6,500-square-metre demonstration area was designed and built in just three months, between May and July 2019, and was later featured by the industry publication Yuanjingren as a model landscape study. The architecture is neo-classical and somewhat weighty, and the landscape was charged with mediating between that weight and a light, contemporary urban lifestyle, drawing on modern techniques with restrained Chinese poetic motifs. A recurring fish motif threads the whole scheme, with its sinuous, fluid movement binding the project together. When a red-line adjustment forced a complete master-plan redo, the team redesigned the landscape in sixteen days, simplifying the earlier expressive concept into a logical scheme that passed Sunac's review unanimously. Sloping design and layered planting walls turn the site's level difference into an advantage; the walls also act as sound barriers against the adjacent urban expressway. A streamlined fish curve becomes the entrance portico, easing the constrained street frontage. Inside, layered stone terraces carry falling water and dense planting, and a mirror pool opens onto a broad lake; the marketing centre sits on the water, offering quiet, meditative space. The minimal modern vocabulary is infused with Chan sensibility, and borrowed, framed and divided views from Suzhou gardens shape the rear scene wall. Circular ripples are simplified into circle elements that make the rear garden playful and interactive, with extensive sculpture and, for the summer opening, a mist-spray system cooling visitors.