The Vanished Garden


The project is located in the historic district of Dongnanyi, Datong Ancient City, which retains a large number of traditional residential buildings and has a relatively complete historical style. The regional site of the project has been abandoned for many years, but it is a rare public space in the transformation of the historic district of the ancient city. Naturally, the public space cannot lack the participation of people, and the project needs to solve how to introduce vitality into the small inner courtyard space. The site is composed of the display space on the ground to the visual corridor space raised by 5.35 meters, and the material is progressive from old to new, emphasizing the iteration of time. It is mainly divided into four parts: the ground display space, the square, the gallery space that elevates the vision and the upper mirror stand. The materials of the ground display space are all from the site, selected by the designer personally, arranging the display of old objects as a display of historical traces. The waterscape square laid by local granite is closely connected with the corridor space. The combination of the waterscape is extracted from the "mortise and tenon", and the square provides the function of distributing people. The steel corridors step by step, forming a good interactive relationship with the square, providing the possibility of interpretation, while showing the reverence of life and culture; The corridor on the second floor encloses a U-shaped space and talks with the ground. People walk and stop, forming a better interactive relationship between old objects and viewers. At the end of the flow line, which is also the highest point of the site, the stainless steel mirror box "disappears" in the skyline, perfectly integrated into the scene, stepped into the stand, overlooking the fifth facade of the ancient city, and triggered people's thinking in the interaction: just as some distant memories seem to disappear, but in fact remain in the mind of a generation.



Project address: Datong, Shanxi

Client: Datong Ancient City Investment Group Co., Ltd.

Designer: XJ Design Agency

Construction unit: Luzhou Hongmao Engineering Project Management Co., Ltd.

Design time: 2022

Completion date: July 2023