maDA s.p.a.m.
Post By:Kitticoon Poopong
Grafting New Roots: Qingyun Ma combines foreign and local elements in building a house in his family's native area.
In a country where high-rise development happens at high speed, architect Qingyun Ma is taking the opposite approach on a project you might describe as slow building. Like the slow-food movement, it employs local materials and workers, responds to climatic and seasonal conditions, and addresses issues of sustainability as part of an orchestrated plan to benefit its community.
Ma and his Shanghai-based firm, MADA s.p.a.m., have been working on the development, Jade Valley Wine & Resort, for 10 years, creating a series of small structures in a rural part of central China where he grew up. Located in Shanxi Province, it is a stone’s throw from the historic sites of Lantian Man (the million-year-old fossils of a subspecies of Homo erectus) and about 30 miles from the city of Xian. Ma’s work there began with a house for his father and the conversion of a flour mill into a winery and exhibition space. And now, after eight years of design and construction, he has added a guesthouse, Well Hall, as a prototype for housing at the site.
The layout of Well Hall follows that of Chinese courtyard housing, or siheyuan, which has historically been shared by multiple generations of one family. Visitors enter the house on the south through a doorway that leads immediately to a narrow courtyard with the eponymous well in the center. This courtyard provides direct access to bedrooms on the east and west and a kitchen-and-dining wing on the north. A walled patio with a pool extends to the north. As a guesthouse, Well Hall follows a traditional domestic model while recognizing that Chinese families are becoming less traditional. As Ma puts it, “The building is the stabilizing thing, while the family is an ever-evolving concept.” The house can be shared by one extended family, by groups of friends, or even by strangers.
Ma served as both architect and developer of the project, budgeting time, materials, and design into his own schedule and that of its craftsmen. His builders spend most of the year farming but are free during the winter for construction work. Well Hall’s bricks are made in a nearby village, so Ma bought them as needed by the basketful rather than the truckload. This allowed him to build in stages and to change the design as his ideas evolved. In fact, Ma used sketches rather than construction documents to convey his design to the workers. He scaled the building according to the size of a brick, as it made better sense to specify a wall of a certain number of bricks than to break some to fit an idealized measurement.
The design strategy behind Well Hall drew on Ma’s familiarity with Jade Valley, where he spent his childhood. But he came to the design of this house as both an insider and an outsider, having left China to study in the West and then again to become dean of architecture at USC, even as he continues his practice in China. He says his distance from Jade Valley allows him to reinterpret not the form but the character of Well Hall, creating a “violation of tradition within tradition.”
You might say Ma brings an insider’s approach to the outside of Well Hall, and an outsider’s approach to the inside. With its brick walls and clay-tile roof, the exterior is typical of the area. High solid walls and M-shaped roofs in this part of China have historically served dual purposes: collecting water into a central well and deterring thieves from the nearby mountains. The M shape also allowed for two short end beams instead of one long one, an economical way to build in poor villages. Still, the brick walls do not duplicate those of nearby buildings. Ma had local bricklayers alternate red and black bricks to form a unique diagonal pattern in the facade.
The interior reflects Ma’s Western influences. He added a second story to provide loft spaces in the bedrooms, for example, and used elements not typically found in Jade Valley, such as metal-and-glass banisters, a glass skylight, and a wall with angled mullions. And he surfaced some walls and floors with Lantian stone, which comes from a nearby quarry but is usually discarded once the prized jade core is extracted.
Ma filled Well Hall with local art, both old and new, and landscaped the site with hitching posts and millstones collected from the valley. He ornamented the house’s entrance with traditional Chinese tile work and a carved lintel reading Jing Yu (Well Hall). In the bedrooms, he installed antique furniture and contemporary painted chests. In the bathrooms, he carved sinks out of rocks brought up from the nearby river.
Ma hopes Jade Valley Wine & Resort can help bring economic sustainability to the region, employing local residents as builders, grape growers, and wine producers. Granted, wine making is new to Jade Valley. “This is the first wine production in the area since Lantian man,” jokes the architect. But the business connects to Shanxi’s agricultural heritage; it’s “not making plastic shoes,” he says. Ma’s plans for the development call for dozens of buildings. If the pace of Well Hall is any indication, constructing these new structures will not happen quickly. Beyond Jade Valley, fast-paced development will continue to fill China with outstanding (and outlandish) pieces of architecture. Well Hall shows that sometimes slow is good.
the PeopleOwner:JADE VALLEY Wine & Resort Corporation Ltd. Architect: MADA s.p.a.m. No 2,Lane 134 Xinle Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 86-21-54041166 86-21-54046646 Personnel in architect's firm who should receive special credit: Architect of record: Qingyun Ma General contractor: 15 Lantian local old craftsmen lead by Qingcai Zhang and Jingtan Zhou in Xiao Zhai Village Photographer(s): Sunny Chen | the ProductsExterior claddingMasonry: Red bricks masonry; Blue bricks (Fire-clay Brick) Wood: Pine wood Roofing Built-up roofing: No built-up roofing, but a lean-to roof with wood purlins for structure and bamboo sheet being covered with plaster for thermo-insulation. Outside surface gray tiles Tile/shingles: Gray tiles Other: Inner garden ground is paved with cobble stones, which is enclosured with raised huge stone and gray tiles covered on outside surface. Windows Wood: Pine wood window frame Steel: Made on site all local materials Glazing Glass: Toughened glass(made on site all local materials); double course glass Skylights: Wood purloin and triplex glass Doors Entrances: Wood door Wood doors: local traditional style Hardware Locksets: local traditional style Hinges: local traditional style Closers: local traditional style Cabinet hardware: Built-in cabinet Interior finishes Demountable partitions: Gypsum board partitions (be used in local carpenter) Cabinetwork and custom woodwork: Built in cabinet Paints and stains: Local traditional style paints, which describing the local life. Special surfacing: “Lantian” Jade polished plate for finishing of floor and toilet wall. Floor and wall tile: “Lantian” Jade polished plate for finishing of floor and toilet wall. Carpet: cashmere handover carpet in living room Furnishings Chairs: Steel tube legs chair, bamboo chair Tables: Black surface and steel tube legs Other furniture: Local traditional wooden box for storage, white semi-transparent glass ball is hung at the ceiling for lighting. Lighting Interior ambient lighting: White semi-transparent glass ball is hung from roof, diameter is 400 millimeters. Exterior: Candle for outdoor lighting Controls: Common Controls Conveyance Accessibility provision (lifts, ramping, etc.): Outdoor steps are made of stone. Indoor stairs are made from food, which is cover with “Lantian” Jade polished plate Plumbing: Plumbing for swimming pool |
