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Architects: L&M Design Lab
- Area: 250 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Qingyan Zhu
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Manufacturers: Terrazzo & Marble, Denison, Duoyi, Lipang, Texture coating, Wood Veneer
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Lead Architects: Jinrui Liu, Mingxi Zou
Text description provided by the architects. After starting FIRE, Mr. Peng, born in the 80s, decided to bring his wife and children back to his hometown to live with his parents. Therefore, the renovation of this old house in the countryside of Qidong became an urgent matter. The new Peng residence needed to accommodate the different living habits of the two generations so that the rural and urban lifestyles could be blended and distinctly separated. Qidong's rural construction regulations are strict, requiring that the renovation of the Peng’s residence is completed within the original contours (90 square meters of base area) and that the appearance should match that of the original "matchbox". The old house to be renovated was constructed in the 1980s as a standard rural building, a simple standard rural building which, due to its affordability, influenced the countryside of that era in the north and south of the Yangtze River. This is a challenging design, neither the city people's attachment to elegance, nor the rural people's modern improvement, but the need to complete a comfortable daily space for three generations of urban and rural people within a framework full of limitations.
The project site is located at the end of the village, backed by the high-speed railway and highway, where the roar of vehicles is incessant. Therefore, there are almost no windows on the east side and north side of the house facing the highway and the railroad, which makes it like a fortress, tenaciously resisting the rolling wave of urbanization. The windows that do open are located on the west and south sides of the building facing the village, and to avoid reports from villagers that could lead to an indefinite suspension of construction, the building does not extend beyond the contours of the foundation. Peng’s house cautiously talks to this familiar yet unfamiliar field, as if it were a traveler trying to return.
Despite the fact that everything was in accordance with the rules and procedures, our architect friends with extensive experience in rural construction reminded us to renovate the building by "half demolition and half construction", which not only implies an increase in the difficulty and cost of construction but also actually affects the logic of generating the program - starting from the profile. Along with the process of fragmentation of the rural society, the relationship between the neighbors of the village has gradually become delicate, with two threads of interest and kinship dominating the loosening of the social network at the same time. Prior to the start of the construction, the owner was very confident that everything would go smoothly, as not only some of the neighbors in the village are related to each other, but also the families were greeted from door to door. However, reports and quarrels still came as expected, and in the end, the original chicken coop and firewood house could not be saved after many rounds of efforts, neither photos nor remote sensing images proved that it had ever existed. By a stroke of luck, the main building was eventually renovated after two sections were put together. With the loss of the small attached bungalow, the Peng’s House became cooler in the atmosphere, and eventually, we had to accept this slightly lonely house. The annexed bungalow, which was originally intended to be a mahjong room, was continued in the form of a grape arbor, where Mr. Peng’s father could still play mahjong with his neighbors, and everything was as it was in the old days, except for the loss of the roof and the enclosure. It seems to be a metaphor for Mr. Peng's family's "return to the field", a building made up of sections on the top, bottom, left and right, the result of some kind of changing heterogeneous mix of urban and rural areas, which, although it looks similar to the old house, is completely different from the old one.
Countryside - the hall and the compartments. The need to consider a place to organize the afterlife of the elderly after their passing away, which was even the only requirement in the design brief, distinguishes Peng’s Mansion from villas or B&Bs in terms of typology. Before the renovation, the old house had a hall and a wing, except for the hall, the first floor of the wing housed the elders, and the second floor was the children's bedroom, which was the most adaptable building prototype in the 1980s to the local customs and habits. The hall is a ceremonial space in traditional houses, used for honoring ancestors and gods, worshiping heaven and earth, and celebrating weddings, funerals, and birthdays. In the Chinese countryside, weddings and celebrations are an important link in local social relations. Although young people's weddings are becoming more and more "foreign" as a result of urbanization, and are generally no longer held in the home, the funeral ceremonies of the elderly still continue to be "traditional". When an old man passes away, the spirit will stop in the hall, and the number of days will be calculated by the Feng Shui master according to the eight characters of the birth date, and the whole village will come to help organize, wash and cook, and receive guests and so on. For Old Mr. Peng, the most important thing is whether his funeral is done properly and decently and whether his son and daughter-in-law can do their best for the guests and neighbors.
As village life has no secrets and neighbors would visit anytime, Peng's house followed the common practice of his neighbors and did not have a courtyard wall. The design of the first floor continues the traditional space combination of the hall and compartments, with the main door of the hall always open and the compartments for the elderly, "one hall and one compartment" adapting to the daily life of the older generation, and the details of the house type have been optimized for the elderly on the basis of the traditional pattern. In the past, the view in the center of the hall was usually an incense burner, and the painting in the middle of the hall was used for worship. In the new Peng’s House, there is no longer such a need, so the design translates this pair of views into a western kitchen and high windows, where the blue sky and white clouds enter the painting and also bring soft lighting to the hall. The terrazzo floor on the first floor of the new Peng’s House is the same as that of the old house, as the elderly and the neighbors pass through the dirt floor, where the soles of their shoes are dirty, and the terrazzo is durable and easy to take care of. The double bedrooms in the old man's house have independent external doors, which are always open during the day and can also be directly connected to the grape arbor through the door on the west side, where neighbors often come to have a seat. This is the familiar lifestyle of the older generation who was born in the 50s, which belongs to the countryside acquaintance society.
City--Public and Private Areas. Above the second floor is the living space of the 80s children's family. Through the simple ritual of changing shoes, people are reminded that they will enter a more private area, and they are also denied of sudden visits from uninvited guests. On the second floor, there is a living room and a study room, which is the actual living room of a modern house, where the children of the 80s live and meet their guests. The living room is connected to the upper and lower atriums, a point of connection between the city and the countryside, and with a height of 10 meters, it gives the space a strong sense of ceremony and connects the small families living above the second floor. Although Peng's house is only 2.5 floors visually, the interior of the renovated Peng's house actually has 4 floors through the staggered design. The design separates Mr. Pang's study room, the children's bedroom and study room, the master bedroom, and his wife's study room into different levels to ensure the privacy and independence of each family member. We have a study room on each floor so that all members of the small post-80s family have independent space for work, reading, and entertainment. As times change and under the influence of urban lifestyles, the importance of private space in the family is becoming more and more prominent. People are beginning to prefer to use electronic devices in their own space to read or watch what they are more interested in, as opposed to the whole family huddling together to watch TV.
But we still reserve a rich relationship between seeing and being seen in the space above the second floor. In contrast to the complete openness of the first floor, the interactions above the second floor are more ambiguous, connected to each other through a series of successive passages. "Mr. Peng's family is mainly engaged in stock speculation after retirement, and the spatial pattern of the through-highs is like the curve of a stock's continuous upward movement, which makes the new Peng Residence an "upward movement house" according to his friends. As an alternative interpretation of feng shui, the "stopping" will also bring more luck and good fortune to the family. We named this house Crossing House, as it appears in the aerial view, a house located at the intersection. We are at such a crossroads between the village that cannot go back and the city that cannot be bid farewell to, and the interior of this house is also a crossroad, leading to two completely different ways of life.
On the south side of the building, the third and fourth floors form a crossing relationship on the facade with two staggered balconies. The inner balcony of the third-floor children's room and the terrace of the fourth-floor master bedroom are arranged diagonally, forming an "X" with the square glass windows of the third-floor guest bedroom and the fourth-floor master bedroom, which are also arranged diagonally. This vertical depth change makes the scenery of different rooms rich in layers, which is a poetic feeling of space. It eliminates the boundaries between horizontal, vertical, oblique, and internal and external spaces, as well as the sense of solidity brought by the matchbox contour under an extremely small site area. The building bid farewell to the unfamiliar city with its solid and detached back, while facing the aging and withering village with its soft and open face. The study on the second floor on the south side has corner glass windows that extend to the west, with transparent openings resembling windows and doors, followed by horizontal long windows on the third-floor height. The geometric changes in the horizontal and vertical directions of the western side weaken the sense of thickness on the gable wall and also provide an internalized view for the study of the three-story children's room. The only two openings on the north side are the windows of the first-floor living room and the second-floor living room. The internal spatial relationship of the building is reflected straightforwardly on the facade, which is also a borrowing of the outdoor landscape.
The design of New Peng’s House is a heterogeneous mix of rural and urban lifestyles, where the networks of large and small families, two generations of parents and children are intertwined, and ultimately harmonized into a simple and rational architectural space. With the rapid development of the times, people are leaving and returning, and the lifestyles of the Post-50s, Post-80s, and Post-10s are all changing, and the only thing that remains unchanged is the change itself. A bird's-eye view of Qidong Peng’s House, its stance is both integrated and transcendent, like a recorder of the changes in the vernacular society, standing silently in this land.
