Text description provided by the architects. The stream winds down from the main peak of the Lianyun Mountains, carves out a wide triangle of land in Jinkeng Village, and continues flowing southwards after a big bend. In the rice fields in front, villagers sow Chinese astragalus seeds every spring. The flowers that bloom will become fertilizer for the rice this season after they wither. The Spark Lodges were conceived and formed under such a background - we hope that they are not only the seeds of beauty, but also the beauty itself, and as well the beginning of the next beautiful period.
Jinkeng does not look like a traditional Hunan village. Due to the popularity of river trekking in summer here, indigenous people who didn’t go out to work gradually and spontaneously have formed a complete tourism industry chain in the past few years. This small village has thus been able to adapt and integrate into this rapidly changing era. The image of the village presents more of a trivial daily life collage of the mediocrity brought about by affordable industrialization, farming life, and tourism scenes:
As far as the eye can see, apart from a yellow-walled, black-tiled adobe house in the corner that still retains some old memories, other buildings in the village are unconventional not only in terms of the spatial prototype - single-family houses generally occupy the entire homestead with three, four, five, six, or even eight or ten bays (let alone courtyard spaces); The construction methods are also too convenient or even rash - the blue or red steel profile roofing sheets, PVC windows, self-built metal pergolas...all showing a kind of ready-to-use economic pragmatism. As a project that requires rapid construction, how to reduce construction costs, improve construction efficiency, and create differentiated spaces without violating the zeitgeist in this small region became the main topic of this design.
Just as Jinkeng Village had no intention of constraining itself to tradition, neither would these small lodges like to integrate into the current rural landscape modestly: although the site selection followed the custom of the village – the lodges, like other houses, had their backs to the mountains and their faces to the plains – their location in the north of the mountain indicated the lack of sunlight conditions for typical residential buildings, which thus made their orientations focused more on the considerations of landscapes. Therefore, it finally led to a basic strategy of continuously changing the viewing experience with the gradually increasing elevation and the three-story volume which looks slightly "towering".
The translucent polycarbonate panels on the roof became the most eye-catching feature of the exterior. This inexpensive material displays different visual textures at different angles and lighting conditions. Providing sufficient sunlight, these small caps show more of a white frosted texture, while the edges vaguely reflect the trees and skies nearby. But when you look at it from a different angle, the facade becomes transparent again, forming a certain depth with the wooden boards behind the cavity. As the sky darkens, they light up the surrounding woods and fields like four lanterns with white lampshades, implying the restless inner activities that do not wind down as the night deepens.
The three-sided floor-to-ceiling windows on the ground floor fully extend the sight horizontally, like viewing a Chinese painting on a horizontal scroll – the scenery from far and near, high and low, slowly unfolds， so that people get very close to the surroundings at this level. Since the living space is relatively isolated from other rooms upstairs, all mosquito-proof screens on the ground floor were deliberately removed at the beginning of the design. The wide-open gray space allows the country air to spread freely indoors without having to worry about insects running into the bedroom. The space on the second floor does not open to the rice fields straightforwardly, but implicitly directs the sight to the corner window and side window which both evoke a sense of close-up square-shaped paintings framing scenes at a smaller scale – these openings on the façade simultaneously ensure better privacy. The loft makes full use of the height, presenting an oversized long vertical scroll at the foot of the bed where the connection between people and the environment finally extends to the farthest Lianyun Mountains. Nature is no longer an abstract concept; it concretely penetrates the entire space and blends into every corner.
These lodges are not scarecrows watching over chicken coops or the rice fields, nor are they periscopes for city dwellers to pry into the country life. They are containers filled with fireworks, inside of which your heart finds a moment of ignition, blooming in the blending of clouds and fields, illuminating heaven and earth, reflecting yourself.
