Wiki World Natural Camp / Wiki World + Advanced Architecture Lab[AaL]

Curated by 韩双羽 - HAN Shuangyu

Architects: Advanced Architecture Lab[AaL], Wiki World
Area: 200 m²
Year: 2021
Photographs:Ting Wu, Yanjun Pan
Construction: Wiki World

Text description provided by the architects. Located on the outskirts of Wuhan, the Wiki World Natural Campsite is a rural practice teaching base and research camp joint by universities to serve rural revitalization and sustainable development. The project occupies an area of approximately 666㎡, using the tourism land and facilities in the site to arrange the dotted public classrooms, prefabricated wooden houses, and natural building construction areas. The Wiki World Natural Camp also offers the ultimate Northern European wild living experience and will recruit citizens to join the natural architecture courses. We hope to provide such a site so that more people can find a way to return to nature.

Build naturally. Wiki World continues the natural construction concept, we retain every tree on the site, keep the path and texture of the original woodland and farmland, all the cabins are self-developed prefabricated wooden structure, built together by the team and the user. Natural buildings can be built like Lego. Little cabins, like building blocks, were placed in the forest. We stick to the original wildwood construction technique that we hand-fired the façade of the carbonized wood boards. The cabins are all connected by small metal components that can be repeatedly assembled. We try to create a precise relationship between the cabins and the environment in the forest. Each wooden cabin is elevated above the ground, and no walls or artificial landscapes are used. Nature is the best package.

Natural habitat- Wild home and 8m2. We built a lot of interesting cabins, and we yearn for the opportunity to live in nature after the COVID-19. We need a container, it'd better be made of wood, very warm, we can walk around the room barefoot, sit down to watch the autumn leaves fall out of the window, nature wrapped us, I feel like back to the origin of life. It reminds me of "The Last Child in the Woods", maybe we never grow up, let’s just be willful for once with our best friends, we hope that life has the smell of leaves and the breeze on our cheeks: we want to build our own forest cabin and live together!

Wiki World Natural Camp / Wiki World + Advanced Architecture Lab[AaL] - Interior Photography, Windows — © Ting Wu, Yanjun Pan

The cabin is small and hidden in the woods as if it is part of nature;
The cabin is lightly placed on the earth, not a burden to nature;
Cabins are put together quickly like Lego, with many families involved.
There is the song of birds and the breeze between trees. The leaves rustled beneath my feet as I approach the wooden cabin. There was a lonely cabin in the woods, as small as a building block, but fulfilled all our dreams of a wilderness home: the wood, the fireplace, the loft, the warm carpet under our feet.

Natural Architecture Education - Urban and Rural Co-construction. Together with French universities and the French Ministry of Culture, we create a camp with the theme of natural architecture education. In the past ten years of practice, we have completed dozens of community co-construction projects in more than ten countries around the world, and thousands of families have participated in them. In Wiki World natural campsite, we hope it is not only a static space product but also a place to learn and build together with more friends who love architecture.

We have completed the "Forest Shelter" and "Wild Milk Tea Shop" projects with families. We will hold more interesting projects with more community agencies such as "Forest Bookshop” "House of Homeless Animals" and "Left-behind Children’s Classroom". We believe that it will bring more vitality to the Chinese countryside through the interactions between urban and rural communities and physical collaborative constructions.