Text description provided by the architects
COHL Xishan Fu in Beijing takes its landscape language from a layered reading of architecture, Beijing culture and the Prince Gong's Mansion garden. The design simplifies a dense repertoire into a ritualised layout that borrows the axial organisation of traditional Chinese mansions and the strict spine of the Prince Gong's Mansion garden, then combines that order with contemporary domestic habits. A three-court sequence structures the whole landscape: the first court is the ceremonial front hall, the second the distinguished threshold, and the third the reception garden; the ten scenes of the Beijing mansion unfold layer by layer, so that every return home becomes a journey through remembered splendour. The first court, the ritual of the princely mansion, follows eastern etiquette and continues the Beijing-mansion register; the main entry is solemn and luminous, projecting the presence of a Beijing residence gate, distant and grand, close and refined in its quiet romantic Chinese atmosphere. The gate is fully carved in stone, with vivid, auspicious detail, and the forecourt paving is finished as imitation white-marble cloud relief edged with bronze, hinting at luxury and dignity. The second sequence, the Returning Cloud Road, leads from the gate through a tree-lined avenue and a pool before a pavilion, into a varied garden where traditional eastern aesthetics meet classical culture and galleries, planting and stone are woven together so that poetry and landscape run through one another. At evening the homecoming lights bring warmth to the urban night-returner; in morning mist the landscape becomes the harbour from which residents set out for a busy day. The third court, Mirror Water Welcomes the Guest, is inspired by Lin Yutang's description of a refined rich residence, with courtyard within courtyard, trees over the roof, and sky seen through the branches; greenery and water mist surround the layered garden, and galleries, water, planting and stone compose a quiet, aristocratic domestic world.
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