Brilliant Rongli Shimao

Shimao Cuican Rongli in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, is a 980-square-metre residential display landscape designed in 2020 by QIDI Design's Yuanshi division, with interior design by Shenzhen Matrix. Tongxiang is associated with the writers Mao Dun and Feng Zikai, with the Hangzhou-Jiaxing-Huzhou plain and with Wu culture, but its most vivid image is water-town life: interlaced rivers, houses set at the water's edge, front streets and back canals connected by bridges, and long, narrow lanes between high, thin walls. The design asks how to make a water town that is not a pastiche. Using modern deconstruction, the team strips water-town imagery out of fixed Tongxiang symbols, refines the flavour of each element, and rebuilds an order related only to nature, then recomposes it through classical garden-making techniques rather than by literal imitation. Five traditional methods—borrowed scenery, framed view, pinched view and opposite-view—are used to produce five overlapping scenes: Clear Pool Mirroring, Pine Path and Stone Isle, Wind-gathered Pause, Water's Lead, and Dappled Forest Light. The first scene establishes the modern tone with a clean facade and vertical lines, then a still pool, a mirror screen, placed stones and vertical lines announce the entrance. At the path's end, a sculpted pine leads along a lamp-lit route toward a stone isle in the water. A light breeze moves gauze, gravel lies beside an uneven stone wall, and visitors advance into an unexpected chamber. Looking back, the water reads with controlled tension: wind moves the water into cascades, still sheets, ripples and patterns, and the white wall and blue sky stay pure. The final episode offers a seat in the forest, where sparse shadows move and dappled light passes through, inviting quiet conversation and release from worldly pressure. As seasons turn and day and night alternate, the landscape grows within time: every step is a view, every season is a view. The project is located on Xingnan Road in the Zhendong district of Tongxiang.