Text description provided by the architects
CIFI Bocheng Central is located in the old centre of Chongqing, surrounded by parks. Le Corbusier, in The Radiant City, described the two cores of ideal dwelling as tranquil solitude lived in daily contact with others; this project pursues precisely that balance between the brilliance of the city outside the door and the quiet, intimate world inside the home. The site sits in a bowl, lower in the middle and higher around the edges; the display zone occupies the flattest central hollow, which will in future become the entry court of the larger low-rise residence group. Drawing on the landscape vocabulary of The Peach Blossom Spring, the design combines traditional motifs with a contemporary hand to open an urban paradise and construct a secret garden. The spatial rhythm of the fable structures the experience as an emotional sequence of opening, seeking, revelation and forgetting. The opening begins at an entry hidden in the city yet lodged in the hills, where a refined gate with shifting light invites visitors to follow the glow toward the hidden spring. A water curtain plays an active, bright score, its surface reflecting the green courtyard, while a single tree stands beside it, giving the narrow entry its life and depth; in sunlight, tree, stone and wall are mirrored in the water like a classical ink landscape. The revealing sequence deepens into a long gallery running from the entry to the sales office, the main circulation artery, where grey and champagne tones set a refined, material register. Coloured flower borders, wall-mounted droplet installations and rough textured stones along the gallery make walking a pleasure and articulate the design's attention to detail. From the gallery the visitor's eye lands on the core water court, whose character shifts with each vantage, composing an urban peach-blossom spring of extreme elegance amid the city's bustle.