Articles by Collin Chen

At the beginning of 2018, Continuation Studio was invited to design a 200-square-meter hotel reception center in a seaside village in Dinghai, Zhoushan. The owner required the center to accommodate basic arrival check-in, as well as breakfast and afternoon tea events for about 20 to 30 guests, and the condition to be used as a temporary showroom. The project site is a plateau at the highest point of the mountain village, leveled out from the high northeast and low southwest slopes. The plan is a sub-square shape that is slightly longer in the north-south direction, with an area of about 400 square meters. The foundation of the ruins is arranged in a straight line, occupying nearly half of the site on the north side, leaving the vacant land on the south. The west side is adjacent to the continuously descending village road in the long direction and forms a height difference of about 2-4 meters from north to south, and is connected to the road by a ramp projecting northward from the southwest corner. The site is separated by a footpath into the village. The tall tree canopy below the shoulder of the road and the two-story houses along the trail together nearly obscure the seascape on the west side, revealing only the canopy light of some trees further down the hillside between the tree trunks in the southwest corner. In other directions, the rolling hills and miscellaneous trees form a tall, tight natural barrier that encloses the site and gathers it overhead, framing a square of the sky. The whole site not only shows a “directionality” towards the road to the west (and the invisible sea in the distance) but also its elevation relative to the road and sinking relative to the mountain forest, presenting a special “stratigraphic sense” of a horizontal slice of the mountain. Variable function means a universal and conventional plan form. Confronting the flat base with only vague feeling and the almost featureless mountain environment, how to make the building fit the temperament of the site while satisfying the function, and at the same time obtain a rich spatial experience beyond the daily, and also maintain and enhance the architectural quality we insist on, becomes the question we need to answer.

A brownfield on the outskirts of Nanjing was restored by convening a garden exposition and thereafter is transforming into a tourist resort. The project is located in a large quarry of the brownfield and is planned to be a tourist complex themed by regenerated quarries, which includes a hotel, botanical garden, restaurant, café, and outdoor theater. The project faced challenges not only from the severely damaged natural environment of the quarry but also from the complexity of the project’s functions and goals.

It’s a building renovation project. In an old traditional neighborhood, the building has been transformed from offices and a hotel into an artistic and cultural complex, opening up to the city with a simple and distinctive personality, reuniting the natural landscape of the lake and the lakeside historical and cultural district, activating and bringing new vitality to this historic city.