Mountain coffee

The project lies east of the Jingyuan Art Center in Beijing; the owner wanted to use the first and second floors of an office building for a free cafe where customers can linger and chat freely. Because the first Mountain Coffee is at the foot of Xiangshan, this city shop also wants to smell of the mountain. With a limited budget, only common materials can be used. The interesting challenge is that the first floor has a 3.8-meter height: too tall for one floor but too tight for two. Thinking of the mountain, the architect recalled Su Shi's poem: viewed horizontally it is a ridge, laterally a peak, far or near, heights differ; not knowing Lushan's true face, one is in the mountain. On a sudden impulse, the team dug one meter down at the center and added a mezzanine above. When customers step from the mezzanine down into the excavated negative floor, they experience entering a mountain. The other mezzanine is lower, so customers can only sit or lie, a good place for two or three to chat. Under the stairs to the second floor is a small wooden cabin, with the stair hidden behind it. The second floor is divided into small spaces not by solid walls but by green plant shelves; as time passes, plants adjust naturally, and sitting in sun with wind blowing is deeply comfortable. This is a freely organized, flexibly used, growing, living space; every brick and wood retains the traces of workers' labor, a kind of dialogue across distance with the people who use the space.