Text description provided by the architects. If the greenhouse is understood as an orderly adjustment of light, temperature, humidity, wind, and the place where plant grows,the garden center which relies on the greenhouse for sale can be imagined as a place where light,shadow and nature order is captured.
Garden Center. As a garden center with strong individual professionalism, it often takes the greenhouse as its main part, and the plans can be regarded as the owners here. Compared with the ordinary market, the growing environment is more empathized, which is similar to a place for sheltering plants. According to the distribution of plants, the garden center is divided into three parts: the shopping experience area, plant area, and material area. As a place of consumption, the participation and experience of customers need to be paid more attention to. Therefore, how to deal with the coexistence of people and plants, and how to adjust the connection between the building and the greenhouse become the problems that need to be improved in design.
Start with greenhouse: Continuous roof truss and standard height are the characteristics of the greenhouse. The specific attribute basically determines the architectural form of greenhouses. The demand for plants for light and air limits the facade materials of greenhouse buildings as well. As a glass greenhouse for cultivating plants, it is difficult to be reconstructed into a spatial form. Thus,it can be regarded as a developing area that can regulate nature. Sunshine, wind, temperature, and humidity are regulated orderly so that plans can grow smoothly here.
Superposition of greenhouses: Different from the cash register of supermarkets or other stores, the trading area of the garden center is also the area for customers to rest and experience. As a store nearest to the greenhouse, it is also a transit station for plants and a point for people to exchange. Absorbing the commonality between gardening and life, the cashier space has made a natural organization for the structure, facade, and space of the building, which makes the area where people stay have a natural atmosphere.
The superposition and interweaving make the building form a new order and the structural array of the greenhouse evolves. The order of cast-in-place concrete coordinates with nature form creates a more growing space. With the distribution of functional areas, the overall rhythm of the building also comes into a coherent form.
The order of nature. Corresponding to the double slope top of the greenhouse, designers hope to establish a cast-in-place framework order. Similar to a greenhouse, it can shelter flowers from wind and rain, at the same time, the sheltering sense of canopy space not only satisfies the order of nature but also the atmosphere of space. So that the tree-shape concrete structure is selected as the module unit to form a continuous distribution of trunk and branch. Intertwined twists make the roof undulate, such as walking under the forest, which creates a free and comfortable space atmosphere.
The rhythm of light and shadow. The organization's form of the facade extracts elements from the trees. It creates a natural and random array. The grid system not only avoids the direct sunlight but also gives people the enlightenment of associating the crown and shade. From the trunk to the crown, the filtering of light and shadow is from sparse to dense, like the flickering light and shadow of trees. The grids have three unit modules from bottom to top. The first floor is the widest. Combined with a glass curtain wall, it can maximize the external scenery and sunshine in the sight of consumers. The grids on the second floor are narrower to form a relatively regular facade organization. The third layer of grids is most dense, which corresponds to the folded roof, with rich twists and turns, forming a natural continuous shadow image, filtering the direct sunlight to the maximum extent. Through the changes of the three rhythms of the facade grid, not only an interesting facade light and shadow order is created, but also a deep forest imagination is provided for consumers.
As a flagship store, the garden center is not only used as a greenhouse market but also as the main exhibition hall at the World Garden Conference annual, becoming a garden center integrates sales, exhibition, and experience.