The Café in the Orchard is situated in a poplar wood on the peripheries of Beijing. The great scale of artificial plantation of poplars has a matrix prearrangement that is familiar sight to and a temporal tie to the northerners of the elder Chinese generation.
The poplar canopy exceeding the architecture is obliged as the first architectural interface that contacts the firmament. It is a natural light filter that tolerates subtle yet unremitting vicissitudes on atmosphere at diverse intervals of a year. In summer, lush foliage formulates a colossal shadow; in winter, heated sunlight penetrates the rooftop into the chamber. Under the coating of the filter, the building roof is assumed as the second level of interface that additionally collects and sieves the natural light. We categorize three sorts of roof sections to address the light, by utilizing dissimilar arches and perpendicular plates to introduce the light into the interior. At the same time, three light settings and spatial measures give feedback to three imperative functional zones: scattered seating zone, sales part, and family area.
The poplar matrix on plan seems humble and dull, but entails a vital clue for the site. We build an architectural volume tangent to and detached to the ground, attempting to generate a manner of perception through two altered elevations. The edifice encompasses a bulky café and a minor multi-functional space, answering to tangential and detaching conditions relative to the ground respectively. From the café to multi-functional chamber necessitates an incessantly-rising and progressively-floating translucent trajectory. The dissimilar visual understanding of the poplar wood governs the design fundamentals of the slope angle and elevation of the trail. On site, we discover that the wood either materializes or grows muddled, when spotting it from a slanting or parallel perspective; instead, the wood matrix comprises a denotation of frame, while perceived from an orthogonal direction.
Location: Shunyi, Beijing
Architects: Vector Architects
Principal Architect: Gong Dong
Project Architect: Chen Liang
Project Members: Tianyu Zhou, and Li Liu
Material: Concrete
Area: 200m2
Period: 2013.04-2013.07
