Silver Architecture, Building and Structure Design · 2022
Greenbay Homestay
by Xi Lang
- A' Design Award 2022 Silver Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: Shall Design
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 16,547
- Verification code 2AB0116A44 · Verify this award
About Greenbay Homestay
Greenbay is a homestay built in Ya'an City, Sichuan Province, China. The building stands among terraced tea fields, with views of the tea landscape to the south and the Sichuan-Tibet Railway to the north. The plan resembles a hexagonal snowflake and holds three areas: a public area, thirteen guest rooms and a logistics zone. A triangular outdoor atrium forms the central hub of the building. The interior uses wood with white and grey tones. Large transparent surfaces open the rooms to the tea fields and reduce the impact on the local ecology.
This distinguished example of contemporary hospitality architecture represents a compelling synthesis of modernist formal vocabulary with vernacular building traditions, demonstrating how thoughtful architectural intervention can engage meaningfully with agricultural landscapes of considerable cultural and aesthetic significance. The design achieves remarkable presence through its confident deployment of pristine white volumes organized in a dynamic pinwheel configuration, each wing capped with traditional gabled roof forms that simultaneously reference regional building typologies while asserting contemporary geometric clarity. The architect's sophisticated understanding of site relationships manifests in the building's orientation, which appears calibrated to embrace views across the terraced terrain while creating intimate courtyards and transitional spaces between the interconnected pavilions. The dramatic double-height glazed facade of the primary volume suggests programmatic hierarchy, likely housing communal gathering spaces that benefit from expansive landscape views and generous natural illumination, while the smaller peripheral wings presumably accommodate more intimate guest quarters. The material strategy demonstrates admirable restraint, the uniform white treatment unifying the complex volumetric composition while creating maximum visual contrast with the verdant landscape context. The captured image reveals the architect's attention to artificial lighting design, with warm interior illumination transforming the building into a welcoming beacon within the twilight landscape, while subtle exterior lighting accentuates architectural surfaces and creates gentle pools of light along pathways. The integration of contemporary architectural ambition with the timeless patterns of agricultural land stewardship invites contemplation of the evolving relationship between hospitality, landscape, and architectural expression in rural contexts, prompting viewers to consider how buildings might serve as mediators between the desires of visitors seeking respite and the enduring rhythms of cultivated terrain.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Situated in Ya'an City, Sichuan Province, this project boasts an excellent 270 degree view of tea fields to the south and the Sichuan-Tibet Railway to the north with the tea shore sitting between the undulating hills and surrounded by a green sea of tea. The design narrows the distance between the building and the environment with a focus on visitors’ experience and less impact on the nature.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The building totals over 1,700 square meters and the overall floor area is about 2,700 square meters. The project consists of three main functional areas: a public area, 13 guest rooms and logistics.
- Tags
- Homestay, Tea Sea, Original Ecology, Triangle, GREENBAY
- Production Technology
- The triangular outdoor atrium is a hollow hub space of the building, around which a series of high and low, wide and narrow, closed and open spatial patterns are formed. The interior design mostly adopts wood, white and grey colors, creating a simple and welcoming style that gives visitors a sense of comfort and simplicity in a secluded countryside. The animal-shaped decorations are simple, stylish and approachable, giving visitors a sense of novelty and being in nature. Also, in order to maximize users’ experience and blend perfectly with the nature, designers leverage the large-scale transparent style rather than the traditional suburban courtyard-style, letting visitors be in a sea of tea.
- Design Challenge
- The biggest challenge is to avoid damage to the original ecological environment as the project sits in a sea of tea. Also, the building design has to provide best lighting and landscape view for each guest room and make each zone blend naturally with others so as to give the most comfortable experience for visitors.
- Project Duration
- With location being selected in 2019, the project kicked off and completed the construction in 2020, and later officially open to the public in 2021.
- Operation Flow
- The design places huge emphasis on the variety and rhythm of space. Upon entering the room, a two-storey height lobby, a large space in which visitors can have a clear picture, comes into the sight. This is followed by a thin corridor with a connecting bridge overhead, where the interior gradually comes into view. The atrium is a three-dimensional high space formed through indoor-outdoor terraces of different heights, reflecting the most diverse aspects of the Green Bay. Then water scenery and a multi-purpose hall sit there next, setting the tone for the final lounge space, which opens up completely and is combined with a sloping reading area to have most scenery be seen from inside.
- Research
- Mengding Mountain, the cradle of the world tea culture, is the earliest place in China to manually cultivate tea according to written record. Qilong Village sits here with layers of terraced tea fields, which is a perfect place for the construction of this project.
- Inspiration
- With inspiration from undulating tea fields, the main body of the building resembles a floating hexagonal snowflake, with the three areas relating to the three axes of the 'snowflake'. Each area is clearly divided - except for the logistics office, other two areas both feature a landscape surface of over 120 degrees. Visitors inside the building can have a full view of the tea sea.