The Yangtze river

Yucheng Changjiang Zhu is a riverside residential demonstration zone in Jiangjin District, Chongqing, on the east section of Binjiang Avenue, with a direct frontage onto the Yangtze River. The city's dramatic mountain-water setting calls for architecture and landscape that grow freely from the slope. The design team sought to preserve the native landform as far as possible, so that the buildings and landscape present their most authentic natural posture and speak to residents of a poetic urban dwelling. The challenge was to make the design feel both modern and emotionally Eastern, and to intensify a poetic homecoming sequence within a constrained site. After carefully choosing angles, the team maximised the river view: the building itself acts as a viewing platform, raised above the water so that the river and architecture merge. Rooftop parameters - soil depth, loads, ventilation shafts, light wells, railings - were repeatedly adjusted to preserve the river view while meeting code. Taking modern art as its starting point and poetic imagery as its path, the design borrows from the classical poem "Spring River, Flowered Moonlit Night," placing the demonstration zone on the floor with the best river prospect and composing a "small but beautiful" viewing terrace. The entrance landscape wall uses Jazz White marble with copper-plated metal strips that echo the lines of scholar-rock arrangements; through the gate, irregular planters and narrative sculptures set a meandering yet calm pace. Water features present two springs, two moons, two tides and two seas layered over one another, and waterside seating shares the Yangtze's moonlight and tide. A leisure pergola frames the whole day's landscape, while a dense grove and flower border close the sequence on a lingering note. The client is Yucheng Real Estate.