Riverside One Zhaoqing

Shimao Riverside No.1 in Zhaoqing, Guangdong, designed by QIDI Design's Xiamen office with interiors by Shanghai Biyu, draws on two local references: Duanyan, the famous inkstone that is the first of China's four famous inkstones, and Zhang Daqian's splash-colour landscape painting "Valley Mouth Dwelling". The architecture reads as a glass time-box hovering by the city road, and the landscape extends the inkstone idea through a sequence of "ink" spaces: winding winding-water channels, cascading terraces and splashing-ink blooms, using a large xieyi brush language to express the luxury of Shimao's Bright Riverside series. The building is lifted and cantilevered toward the river, and set back from the road to make room for landscape, so that site and architecture read as one. The spatial narrative starts from the Maritime Silk Road and unfolds through an immersive "stepping into the painting" sequence, producing visual interplay of solid and void, mist and flowing time. The interiors, themed on xuan (the Daoist mystery of heaven and earth), follow a thread of xuan mountain, xuan inkstone and xuan water, treating the glass box as a vessel for time. Super-white glass gives the facade lightness and transparency; at night, interior light pours through, fusing technology, future and texture. Linear elements order the space, and layered lighting gives shadow and light their own quiet beauty. Across roughly 10,000 square metres of landscape, completed in 2020, the project balances architecture, interior and nature through a single Duanyan inkstone, granting the home a flow of life, time and ecology.