Huafu,Hefei

China Merchants Yonghua Mansion in Hefei is a display-zone landscape of about 12,000 square metres by Instinct Fabrication for China Merchants Shekou Hefei company, at the intersection of Baohe Avenue and Nanjing Road in Binhu District. It is the twelfth Yonghua Mansion in the developer top product line, and a particular statement in Hefei, the hometown of Li Hongzhang, the late-Qing reformer and founder of China Merchants. Rather than adopt the familiar neo-Chinese, neo-Asian or Orientalist registers common in the market, the project pursues a national style, mansion rhyme that aims to evoke the breadth and confidence of a great civilization; the design avoids over-complicated spatial division, circuitous circulation and decorative excess, instead preferring direct, composed, unhurried arrival. The sequence is organized as three gates, three courts. The first, the Gate of Dignity, is dominated by a copper wall engraved with Li Hongzhang memorial to the Empress Dowager requesting the founding of China Merchants; warm-toned bronze plaque, beige walls and warm-yellow light soften the ceremonial threshold. The second, the Forecourt of Tolerance, maximizes space by pushing all vertical elements to the perimeter, placing at the centre a water feature scaled from the imperial seal that authorized the company, condensing the China Merchants story into one moment. The third, the Inner Court of Splendour, is framed by giant silk prints of Wang Ximeng eleventh-century A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, the Song-dynasty handscroll in the Palace Museum. The silk is sandwiched between glass so that changing daylight animates the landscape, evoking the grandeur of mountains and rivers. A high enclosing wall then closes the sequence around the refined, elegant sales interior.