Fangdingyi Cultural Leisure Resort

Developed by Zhengzhou Vanke, the Fang Ding Yi Cultural and Leisure Resort is set in the historic village of Fangding in Shangjie District, where river valleys open toward Wuyun Mountain to the south and Mang Ridge to the north. The village, more than 600 years old and named a Henan historic and cultural village, is known as the 'hometown of academicians and teachers'; it preserves 43 old courtyard compounds with 279 rooms, 13 of them relatively intact, mostly from the Qing dynasty and Republican period, including loess-plateau cave dwellings, single-slope-roof houses and embroidery towers typical of the central plains. Landscape design by A&N Shangyuan covers 38,000 square metres in a natural, wild-luxury style, designed in 2017. Rather than treating the village as a museum, the project respects its existing language: the dragon-spine ridge that divides space is preserved, usable existing trees are retained, flatter ground becomes the main civic gathering space, and the stepped relation between hill and lake is exploited. The total plan threads together a community parking area, reconstructed village gates and walls that recall the legendary thirteen gates of Fangding, and a lakeside community activity centre set on a south-facing slope with wide views over a winding nine-bend waterway. The design uses the site's grade changes and cliff edges to build rich vertical landscape, and mirrors sky and surrounding scenery in the lake so that water, earth, climate and architecture merge. Positioned as a poetic dwelling space that connects busy urban life with rest, the resort aims to offer body and mind a retreat among 3,000 mu of native lake, mountain, forest and spring.