TRAVELLING WITH Cafe Club At A Riverside Courtyard

Guilin city in China is known to all the world for her splendid Karst landform scenery and the Lijiang River. The site is located at the riverside of a tributary of Lijiang River, also in the old community of the city core. The client is running a hostel for years then planed to reform the canteen and courtyard into a new cafe. Our design target is to create a place not only treats travellers stay-in or drop by the hostel, but also a casual neighborhood hub for people live in surrounding community.



The existing space had been re-constructed and decorated by the client and his family few times, so there were various structures, plants and ornamentals making the whole place disharmony. Inspired by the artist couple Chirsto and Jeanne-claude‘s works, we“parcel”almost everything in white color tone, so that those various elements become united and harmony, also as legacies telling stories of the place. The theme blue color came from the same one of the famous travel guidebook“Lonely Planet”.



The interior was originally constructed in 1990s with many bearing posts and walls. Our spacial strategy was dividing the entire space into three zones: a cafe counter, an intimate booth area and a multifunctional area, which could transform to a small salon place for guests to share each other their stories in journey. By calculate enough loading, holes were cut on some bearing wall as view ports, so guests’ sight could penetrate through few layers to outdoor courtyard or other parts of space, like the classic Chinese Garden design technique “Borrowing View”. These various interlocking views offer guests a sense of social interactivity，you could friendly catch sight of others in different zones. One wall of the booth area was demolished and changed to a low window that blurred the boundary of indoor and outdoor. In the open courtyard, high-table alone the riverside offer guests to enjoy views horizontally with pergola full of wisteria as canopies, while the tree-platform welcome them to climb up for a higher view through the other side of river.