The White Suzhou Section Homestay

The White Section Homestay designed by Wutopia Lab in Suzhou was opened in October 2021 in West Lindu Village on the shore of Taihu Lake. It is invested by Jingcheng Culture Tourism Development (Suzhou) Co., Ltd, a subsidiary of TONGCHENGTRAVEL, and managed by Taolu Brand homestay. The White Section Homestay is the first prototype building that is a rural revitalization project developed by TONGCHENGTRAVEL and the Hengjing government in Lindu Warm Village. The weather was excellent when I visited the site. I was even a little drunk in the golden winter day. The most attractive to me, a middle-aged man, is in a daze in such a peaceful and tidy village to ease the pressure from struggling life! I hope that the Section Homestay could express this relaxed and lazy state, rather than haggle over every ounce with precision. The Section homestay is the redesign and reconstruction of the dilapidated house on the original site. The architect cannot change the footprint of the building. It is interesting that the rural buildings in the suburbs of Suzhou were not courtyards, but an C layout. It seems to be half of the courtyard, which inspired me. Half is fine, I decided to design the west facade as a section to expose the internal spatial organization. The Section homestay seems to be the half of the house left by dividing a complete courtyard into two separate houses. This was the origin of Section homestay. The visible half house with the invisible half house were the complete Section homestay, a typical Suzhou courtyard. Since it is a section, I decided to treat the outer contour of the building as a continuous shell with thickness. The thickness of the shell from the wall to the roof is controlled at the same 300mm. That's right, this section should be seen clearly on the west facade. In order to maintain this continuous section, I did not use the common blue tiles for the roof in Jiangnan region, but used a white aluminum cover to maintain visual continuity with the white wall. Considering that the sloping roof should fall freely while not destroying the continuity of the section, a white metal cover flashing was specially designed on the cornice to help the rainwater drop away from the wall. There used to be an independent square pigpen on the north side of the original building, which is now a private room of the restaurant. I could not visually integrate it with the main building. Then I decided to use reflective stainless-steel panels as the facade to make it disappear by absorbing the surrounding scenery, so as to ensure the integrity and independence of the main building. The homestay has 6 houses, which are 6 volumes. In view of the fact, my few memories of the countryside are the swings in the sun-dried rice field when learning farming. I decided to create the room visually as if a swing is suspended to fill the cavity. They should be suspended above the ground floor of the large space in the section. It is even better if it feels a little wiggly. This created certain difficulties for the structure and equipment. Hu Wenxiao adopted the bottom frame seismic wall masonry structure to economically solve the contradiction between the large space required for public activities and the dislocation of the bottom axis network between the upper-hung room space on the first floor.