Housing Estate | Tri House | Kunshan | Jiangsu | China | Atelier Deshaus

In a country housing estate beside the Dianshan Lake, a weekend retreat built for three friends is designed in a minimalist way, totally different from the surrounding villas with sloping roof. The two-story house consists of four cross walls and four longitudinal walls placed on a formal orthogonal grid. The first floor contains the public studio, the kitchen and the dinning-room, and the second floor three individual living units. The horizontal walls divide the vistas and narrow down the view available for the open and flexible ground area, while the vertical walls on the upper level lead the sight across the garden towards the Lake. As a feature of the traditional local residence, courtyards are inserted between rooms to lend sunlight to the north wings. Here, three small yards separated on the second floor form a whole large one on the ground, where dozens of bamboos are linearly planted at the side of the workshop. These bamboos are treated as important space elements to humanize the scale of the yard and create poetic atmosphere......more