Text description provided by the architects
Entering the Biyingxi residential enclave at Luyue Jiangcheng in Chongqing, one seems to step into a mist forest on a cliff. On a winding wooden boardwalk, tall trees and low shrubs emerge from pure white fog, while the architecture floats like clouds across a 4,300-square-meter triangular site poised above a near-forty-meter mountain drop. Designed by WTD for Chongqing Wanyue Real Estate, the temporary sales gallery treats the cliff edge as the primary viewing plane: three sample houses are precisely positioned along the best sightlines toward the opposite wooded hills. Because the inner side of the site adjoins other residential blocks, hard landscape is minimized there; instead, the pedestrian route and its landscape nodes are concentrated along the outer cliff-facing edge, where a zigzag wooden boardwalk links the entrance to the sample houses. Drawing on the imagery of a fantasy forest of conifers, tundra, simple cabins, scattered stones and drifting mist, the design works through three moves. First, a large opening-and-closing rhythm: a wooden platform at the entry frames distant mountains and rivers, set with rough stones, flowering borders and sculptures; a rain chain turns falling water into a poetic line dripping onto the stones. Beyond it, the boardwalk narrows into an enclosed, immersive path, finally opening onto a triangular viewing terrace held between two buildings. Second, a floating forest: because the ground level is interrupted by a garage entrance below, the whole platform is raised, low shrub balls conceal the edges, and tall Norfolk pines with their pointed spire-shaped canopies form the principal tree layer, while a mist system wraps the buildings in cloud. Third, wild natural detail: black steel-grating paths extend the walk, stones and small sculptures dot the route, and durable Brazilian teak is chosen for its resistance to Chongqing's humidity. The result is a suspended, dreamlike forest lifted above the city, a quiet destination for mountain living.
Editor's Pick
