Hainan Wenchang Qi Water Bay 8

Qiushuiwan No. 8 in Wenchang, Hainan, is a 36,000-square-metre demonstration garden designed by Zhu Chongwen with team members Tan Meiqin, Xiao Hailian, Tang Juan, Li Yi and Liu Zihui, for client Luneng Group, designed in 2017 and photographed by Kanjian Photography - Lu Bing. It is conceived as Hainan's first penjing-style classical garden - "though made by man, it appears to be of nature" - built around a single precious Lingbi stone that evokes the local aerospace launch and merges the mountain-water-pavilion-court language of Suzhou gardens with the tropical and Nanyang character of Hainan. The design distils the axial-versus-poetic composition of Chinese classical gardens, extracts mountain, water and stone elements, and blends Eastern restraint with Western monumentality. The existing fantastical stone on site is joined to local myths of turtle stones, wind-cave stones and echo stones to form a memory card of the Shanhaitian place, while original banyans, natural boulders and wetland features are woven into the visitor route. The layout of "one pool, two lakes, six gardens" reconstructs the classic garden idiom in a modern register; the upper and lower lakes differ by about 2.2 metres, and at the drop a 3-metre "flying rainbow" bridge frames a distant view. When excavation uncovered large boulders, the team used them in place, saving transport and enriching the composition. Borrowing, opposing, screening and feature-viewing techniques are deployed with minimalist zen restraint to produce a multi-fused, ecologically restorative resort that, unlike Suzhou, sits beside the sea.