Muyi Manor is located at Shangyang Village, Shuangpu Town, Hangzhou, where land resources and buildings are intended for the development of eco-agriculture given its rustic natural landscape and traditional farming culture. The whole construction is split into independent units, while overhead glass corridors establish links between buildings to form a continuum with a sequence of courtyards. Buildings are interwoven in an appropriate arrangement to avoid excessive density or looseness and ensure an interesting interaction with surrounding sceneries. Lightweight corridors and luxuriant tree crowns make people feel as if the buildings were floating in the air.

Major functional spaces inside the site are interspersed. With a differentiated layout of courtyards, Muyi Manor looks like a rural settlement in the mountains. Grey spaces account for approximately 40% of the construction area, thus maximizing interfaces between the construction and the environment to ensure an efficient incorporation of background landscape into the composition of each room and enhance the leisureliness of spaces used. With a perfect fusion of trees with waters, and man-made architecture with natural surroundings, the unique personality of the architecture, while tucked away in nature, is effectively retained, and a consistent structure with distinctive aesthetics and styles is created to enable an even more powerful life of the construction. 

  The whole construction of Muyi Manor features a dotted structure. With an overhead steel structure to frame the construction, concerns about ground ventilation and moisture prevention are addressed, while potential detriment to arable land parcels are minimized. Besides, a secure and comfortable environment empowers multiple functions: flower houses, restaurants, and reception areas are checker boarded to create public activity spaces highlighting a sense of belonging and prioritizing privacy.

Tree branches are interwoven into the bottoms of overhead lightweight corridors. Through a multi-layered spatial structure, the indoor space is extended outward to incorporate natural sceneries into the composition of the buildings. Here, green spaces, landscapes, and small garden ornaments are reasonably arranged, and comfy indoor spaces are aptly blended with outdoor natural sceneries, making people feel as if buildings ‘grow’ in nature.

The upper part of the construction is made of wood, glass and some rustic black bricks to create a natural look. As the glass can partially reflect background sceneries and reveal what’s indoors, internal and external images arising from such reflection and revelation are overlapped, blurring the boundaries between the interior and exterior and fusing the construction with surrounding landscapes to create a light and translucent effect.

The roof features a sunshade grille plus continuous metal cornices to retain the texture of traditional rooftops while ensuring effective sunlight protection. Indoors, the solid wood structure reminds people of traditional wooden constructions, and enclosure walls built of black bricks are also reminiscent of traditional Chinese architecture elements. All the ingenious design details help to underscore the attributes of an idyllic farming culture.

All these traditional and rustic materials, evolving with the passage of time, has seen social attributes to their natural properties. They help to imbue the architecture with the love of the earth, the vitality of life and the warmth of humanity, and make the architecture built with a modern design approach reflect the meaning and lifestyle of traditional spaces.