Text description provided by the architects. The Agronomy Workshop is located on an irregular plot of land in the west, covering about 300m², adjacent to a small pond. Due to the field ridges and roads, there is a long “little tail” of the red line, which will be used as agricultural research laboratory land. The shape of this plot is very special, as the field ridges cut through its interior, further dividing the irregular plot into two halves by the farm roads. Therefore, I thought it would be better to utilize this small road that runs through the area, allowing the building space, surrounding fields, paths, and landscape to become even more “entangled.”
The building is a single-story volume with a semi-open spiral atrium inside, which introduces the natural environment into the internal courtyard in a natural way, forming a dynamic space where the inside and outside blend together.People can naturally enter the interior and exterior ambiguous architectural spaces as they move along the path.The exterior follows the architectural red line presenting orthogonal volumes and postures, while the interior follows the natural curves of the field paths, forming an inward-curving arc-shaped inner courtyard. The internal and external experiences are distinctly different, creating an interesting dialogue.
The building adopts a steel-wood hybrid structure, where the irregular curved parts are primarily supported by steel structures as the main beams, while wooden rafters are joined together in straight sections to form inward-sloping surfaces. The roof is coated with a combination of butyl and polyurea to minimize visual weight and enhance the materials appearance. The maximum span of the wooden rafters on the roof is 9m, and structural calculations require them to be variable-section. Therefore, the height of the rafters in the inner corridor is uniformly reduced to 200mm. By embedding insulation into the structural layer indoors, the visual height of the variable-section wooden rafters is uniformly reduced to 200mm, further enhancing the structural lightness and blending effect.
We hope to express the purpose of subtly incorporating the environment into the design intent. The architect strives to combine the bodily experience of large-scale landscapes, concrete field paths, public spaces and functional openness, and the details of architecture, addressing multiple issues with coherent and interconnected approaches at different levels of sophistication, thereby achieving the design objective of architecture “harmonizing with the landscape.”
After the building was completed, we were delighted to see that the space has been welcomed by the local community, with the open spaces under the roof gradually becoming a must-visit spot for villagers to stroll and relax after meals. Residents of all ages can be seen moving about and stopping under the roof, while workers during the busy farming season also take shelter and wash up here. During holidays, it has become a favored venue for various cultural markets in Hangzhou. The operators have also developed many unexpected uses based on the spatial characteristics of the building. This demonstrates that the flexible design of public spaces within buildings is effective and represents an important step in our evolving future design thinking.
