Yi'nan Shiziling Service Center & Resort

The project is located in Yi’nan County, a rural village in Shandong facing critical issues: Rural hollowing and depopulation, due to the imbalance between urban and rural areas. The design vision has become essential to Shiziling village’s tourism infrastructure, thus gearing up the village’s tourism. The main road to the village is connecting three groups of cottages same as branches growing on the vast plain surrounded by mountains. The village has the texture and image of a typical countryside in the north of China, with double-sloped roofs and courtyards as the main residential forms, using natural materials such as stones and loess as the main construction materials, presenting the original texture of nature.

The “yard” is a typical space form of local residential houses. Alley grows between yards and fields flow among building clusters, formulating spaces with multiple scales. The street spaces between the courtyards remain the same scale of traditional villages and these neighborhood open spaces with all sizes are connected directly with pedestrian lanes introducing the public place into the site. The service center is the window of Shiziling Village for external promotion, meeting the spatial needs of villagers and tourists for entertainment and leisure, communication, and learning. The dynamic double-sloped roof continues the primitive rural undertones of Shiziling. The resort is a place for interaction and communication between local villagers and foreigners on vacation.

The building is based on the local courtyard and follows the local residential practices in terms of materials and construction methods, fully expressing the respect and inheritance of local customs, taking blocks, red bricks, and red tiles as the main elements, fully expressing respect and inheritance of the local culture.