The curve that shapes the shape. Qingdao Atour Town Parent-Kid Centre by Gn Architects

Description of project by Gn Architects

Duck Architecture
Without elaboration

A year ago, we, from professionals’ point of view, mocked at inferior aesthetics of those “Fu Lu Shou” architectures, but at the same time, we started to probe into reasons behind it also public’s reaction to them.

I actually quite like duck architecture, because the design itself is very good interpretation of its being. In a highly competitive design industry nowadays, this kind of design helps to introduce itself without the needs of extra writing to wrap it up after construction, where on most occasions excessive explanations will instead deliberately disguise mediocrity as thoughtfulness.

Everyone agrees on the idea.

A few days later, Qingdao “Atour Town” project team of SUNAC contacted us and talked about they have a project of Parent-Kid Centre. This became our first attempt to present our ideas into our work.

We presented a twenty-one pages PowerPoint clips, which only few words were included in. We decided not to explain much about the design. As seeing is believing, we hoped to make our design presentable by itself. For this kind of design, we later called it “Pop Architecture”.

The result was surprisingly effective. In fact, we experienced many examples in past years has proven that under the information overload phenomenon, it is right to present the work with simple words and images, this is also true among professionals.

With more and more kids growing up in the cities, the environment in the mountains will escort them to a brand-new world, as well as to their imagination of wonderland. Although the Cang Ma Mountain Forest is already the best gift for children, I always want to build a different big toy for them, imagine them standing in front of the building, and give an exaggerated mouth widely open wow looking.

I used to grow up in the countryside. At every sun set summer evening, I lied down on a bamboo mat watching the birds gliding in the air. I often imagined myself becoming one of them, flying above across the sky, seeing the earth and myself lying down there. This idea accompanied me on my journey into adulthood and has become one of the most important childhood memories of mine.

The Woods in Cang Ma Mountain, Rolled roof  Photographer: Yong ZHANG.

We brought this imaginative scene into our design of this Parent-Child Centre. We designed a rolled-up floor, imagine it as a magic carpet taking off, then we lift the carpet up and it became the form the roof. If you were standing on this magic carpet, just like a bird flying above, you would see the distant mountains and woods, the sky, and the white earth below. Between the magic carpet and the ground are adhesive strings, here you may imagine them as melted cheese, this is the white forest, work as façade.

Flying Carpets in Cang Ma Mountain.

In the early stage of designing process, me and my coworkers and clients have been using the term “Flying Carpet” to refer to Cang Ma Mountain Parent-Child Centre. From its style to function, the Flying Carpet clearly tells us where the focus of this design should be - the white curved rooftop where people can walk on. The language of curved surface has been applied to multiple space within the interior. Setting up an iconic feature for our design is undoubtedly helpful, where media coverage plays quite a part in the project.

We hoped our rooftop to be a white carpet wrapped without borders where visitors can walk on. Due to the safety concern, only restrained area on rooftop can open to the public. We have been searching for alternatives even after the construction has completed, but to no avail. It is regrettable, as it would be lots of fun and meanings to run on a curved rooftop, but thankfully the execute of roof piece revealed fine sense of beauty.

The rooftop has around 1,000m², we intended to use brush stone on rolled-up surface, but problems occurred when constructing the double curved surface roof. Then we found the viscose stone, a material commonly used in pavement selections, in our landscape material room, we found this material is suitable for the rooftop surface. It was a good tryout and I'm sure it will appear again in the future.

We used 1.5cm line-type drainage ditch for our roof drainage, which is set alone the double-surface contour height, and we set siphon at the lowest part of the roof. Stainless steel plate and adhesive stone are used for covers of drains and siphon, to make them visually invisible.

The lucidity roof is composed of double-curved roof and double-surface ceiling, with variable-section arc beams and horizontal support in the middle, and equipment and pipelines are laid within the space between beams.

The lucidity roof is composed of double-curved roof and double-surface ceiling, with variable-section arc beams and horizontal support in the middle, and equipment and pipelines are laid within the space between beams.

Many wonderful things and memories will happen in this recent constructed architecture. I believe it will become the most beautiful terrace in Qindao.

Light into space

At the ground floor plan, you can see four independent programs:a multi-use hall, two movie theaters, a staircase, and a 1918 cafe hidden under a large roof. The gap between the spaces forms the hall and aisles.

In this design we tried to design the building as an exhibition space, with each functional space ,wall and roof being part of the exhibition.

Three sides of the building are glass curtain walls, bringing light into the building efficiently, and there’s a water drop-shaped transparent yard, which we want more natural light to come in and scatter on the indoor curved walls to brightens up the interior.

Basically, the interior during the day is a white art gallery filled with light and curved walls, while at night these become the façade.

In interior design, a small amount of custom-made metal and transparent plastic furniture to décor the space. We avoid using color stacking nor childish symbols in interior designing, which we think they might become negative factor to children’s perception of beauty.

Theres no single structural pillar can be seeing indoors. Three ways were used to hiding the columns. First is to hide major column within indoor wall, the other is a curtain wall column with a special cross-section design, and the third is hidden under the eaves of decorative columns.

The Atour town opened on September 30th. During the National Holiday, it greeted more than 150,000 visitors.

Children were chasing each other and playing in the white jungle, the functional hall was hosting the Marvel exhibition, the Atour movie theatre on the first floor were showing movies, young families and the elderly relaxing in the 1918 Café. On the second floor, there are dancing room and painting room exclusive for kids. Meanwhile, Atour Nature Research Camp were opened at outdoor venue of the building, the Flying Carpet has created itself a 1,000m² diverse functioned wonderland.