Xian ya ju LeFuChun on

Agile Fuchun Shanju, on Taibai Mountain in Mei County, Baoji, Shaanxi, is a 6,752-square-meter landscape designed by Guangzhou Guanji Landscape around the sequence of searching for, seeing, exploring and wandering the mountain. Before arriving, visitors see only a stone wall below the mountain, not the mountain itself; looking up from its foot is the classical mode of high distance. They follow a stream-side path past layered rock waterfalls, ancientceltis trees brushing light on five-flower stone walls, as if walking into a painting of dwellings in the Fuchun Mountains. The first hint of the peak appears under upturned eaves, stone walls and timber lattice, with stacked stones and green lamps giving a translucent ink-wash that invites closer inspection. Entering, visitors meet a front-screen wall; looking from the front of the mountain toward its rear is the mode of deep distance. Bamboo behind the wall, a moon gate over water, and a covered walkway across the pond make it unclear whether light is painting or the water court is dyeing the scroll. On the walkway, light falls on faces, tree shadows embed in the corridor like ice-crack patterns, and a slit of light splits the bamboo-and-timber wall into bright and weathered halves. The mountain is given water as its blood vessels, plants as its hair, mist as its spirit: flowing water, red leaves, rocks and birds descend in cascades from stacked stone cliffs, recalling the rolling ridges of the Fuchun Mountains painting. Trees grow through roofs, water runs by trunks, and everything grows naturally in the sunset glow. The design climbs step by step so that, in the future, residents will have a refined small hill in front and the grand Taibai Mountain behind, and a mountain dwelling will begin on its own. Built with the mountain rather than against it, the project is meant to be wandered, inhabited, and returned to in heart.