Play dirt with the stream

Wantuyouxi is a rural micro-resort in Baihe Village, Maohe Town, Ya'an, Sichuan, designed by the Shangshui Ximu Rural Revitalisation Studio led by Lu Shangjing, for client Chengdu Peilege Valley Cultural Tourism, completed in 2022–2023. A stream runs along the west side of the site, and the original path enters from a small bridge on the south; on the roughly one-mu homestead sits an abandoned farmhouse, separated from the stream by a belt of trees, with tea fields to the east and north. The client wants a self-catering rural holiday house plus riverside camping and mixed-use micro-resort programme. The brief requires a public zone with reception, bar, restaurant and outdoor camping beside the stream, plus three independent guest courtyards, each with its own living room, kitchen, dining, two bedrooms and private outdoor court. The design difficulty is twofold: how to separate and transition public from private within a concentrated buildable area while keeping circulation efficient, and how to orient the different sides of the building to engage each view. Rather than reproduce the inward-facing, enclosed siheyuan, the team turns the typology inside out, splitting the traditional square plan into two L-shaped wings: the shorter L holds the public programme, and the longer L holds the guest rooms. The public wing faces the stream and lawn, while the guest rooms look out through their own courtyards toward the tea fields. Drawing on the traditional Sichuan "linpan" settlement philosophy, the design weaves in local zhennan, qinggang and willow oak trees, and uses a single-pitch metal roof on the guest wing to shed leaves, while the flat roof of the public wing becomes the site's high viewpoint and viewing platform. A central courtyard continues the traditional "four waters return to the hall" device, joining public and guest wings while also separating them. After a large blank logo wall, guests enter the public wing, where bar, restaurant, water bar and outdoor seating open onto the site; a stair at the corridor end rises to a second-floor platform at the height of the surrounding tree canopy, where shade, breeze and the sound of the stream dissolve the boundary between building and nature. The waterside front lawn is a multi-functional campsite for picnics, barbecues, study tours, lawn weddings and birthday parties. Three named guest courtyards—Yuemu, Letu and Xishui—each contain a living-dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and private court, with vertical and horizontal living-room variations and generous outdoor platforms. The project revives the Sichuan linpan philosophy of harmony between heaven and human, where dwelling is not just physical shelter but a quiet return to nature, and argues, after Gottfried Böhm, that the future of architecture is not to fill the ground endlessly but to bring vitality and order back to towns.