Bamboo Craft Village | Archi-Union Architects

Designed by Archi-Union Architects, The Bamboo Craft Village is located in Daoming County, Chongzhou City, Sichuan Province, more than 50 kilometers away from the urban area. The village, with a strong atmosphere of rural life and close neighborhoods, is a typical representative of a local living environment – Lin Pan, along with vernacular intangible cultural heritage – Bamboo Weaving. After looking into the current situation and needs in person, the designer of the village, Philip F. Yuan, attempts to create a rural infrastructure space integrated with the culture industry system sensitive to the ecology, culture, industry, and lifestyle of the village. Actually, the Bamboo Craft Village is a positive result of the InBamboo project, which was originally from a traditional Chinese poem, describing the ideal relationship between a house and its rural bamboo forest surroundings. In the wild naturalness of the village fields is a spiraling tiled house. The overlapping roof is supported by a system of light steel and wood construction, 70% of which was completed by means of an optimized pre-fabrication process. Making use of prefabrication allowed for the architecture, interior and landscape to be completed in a short time of 52 days. The overlapping serpentine roof naturally defines two interior yards, providing a rich interior experience between what is inside and what is outside; between what is a landscape and what is architecture. The various functions of the building are gathered into a continuum under this inter-weaving roof. The project demonstrates a new definition of how architecture can interact with tradition. It provides a means for re-examining the dichotomy between the village and the city. With a new rural architecture industry, pre-fabrication and construction will establish the foundation for a new definition for rural architecture. It will not only help preserve construction traditions found in the rural countryside but will also help advance the village industry overall. The bamboo used two months’ time to pre-fabricate the wood structure and only 52 days for on-site construction is a rural industrialization experiment. Once the equipped countryside industrialization factories combine advanced fabrication approaches, like robotic fabrication with the village architecture industry, a new meaningful industrial development upgrade will take place in the near future.

photography by © Philip F. Yuan

As the first name card of Bamboo Craft Village, InBamboo is not limited to looking back towards convention, but also shows an open attitude towards the future. It has attracted more and more artists, let’s say, new villagers, who are willing to return to the countryside for artistic creation and reconstruction together with aboriginals, inheriting and carrying forward the characteristics of local humanities, thus create more, better, and more diversified upgrading business. And also because of bamboo, the government has full confidence in handing over the transformation and upgrading of the entire village to Philip F. Yuan and his team.
This time, the vision is no longer confined to an abandoned farmhouse base, but a village full of vitality. In the meantime of meeting the perfect fantasy of the paradise described in the traditional literature and fine arts, Bamboo Craft Village provides an opportunity for the industry-driven upgrade experiments during this era. Taking InBamboo as a prototype, Philip F. Yuan uses a topological shape-finding technique, combines different functional requirements of each building to form a variable cross-section tile roof, and then determines the underlying steel-wood support structure for factory prefabrication. Bamboo Craft Village magnifies and maximizes the design-construction integration industry system. The newly built houses are blended into the environment, while so different in terms of experience. They are utopias in the real world, as well as a romantic presentation after all the rigorous procedures of science and engineering.
As a featured village named after the local “bamboo weaving” craft, the village will periodically carry out special events (Arts Festival, construction festivals, etc.), where bamboo weaving, processing, and consumption are fully displayed and taught. Roads are re-organized into a clear system, waterways are sorted into a purification system, as well as a countryside landscape. Ecological agriculture was integrated with landscape and catering. Multi-level public buildings and spaces are taken into consideration. Also, a village guide rule with consideration and sensitivity to the local character is made to take the overall control.

photography by © Huapeng Chu

Dingzhizhu Bamboo Weaving Culture Center
Dingzhizhu Bamboo Weaving Culture Center, located at the village entrance at the mountain foot, is at the first sight of coming tourists and plays a role of guidance. Two small farmhouses that originally existed on the site were integrated into a unified streamlined building space. Under this open and flowing linear roof, there is a mezzanine living space, a high-pass display space, and a semi-outdoor tearoom space. Visitors can enjoy the production, teaching, and display of the bamboo weaving process in the shuttle flow both inside and outside. The building is finished with a local grey tile roof and bamboo weaving façade, with the support of timber structure. The fifth Space
As the village service center, the fifth space is located in the center of the village, with forest trays and canals in the back, facing the public square and rape field, and equipped with a small parking lot. It includes a toilet, teahouse, public chairs, delivery point, ATM, and play areas for kids. The “X” shaped plan stretches into the site, providing a bridge for rest and repose, viewing the flowering fields and village roads below. The building incorporating with the village’s unified architectural language – a curvilinear cross-section roof- is completed with a steel-wood hybrid structure, with the use of bamboo-molded concrete walls and local traditional grey tile roofs. Tourist Center
The tourist center is close to the most beautiful country road – “Chongqing Road”. As the gateway to the Village, it is equipped with bus drop-off points and small parking lots. Situated in the natural, wild rural phenomena, the visitor center located here surrounds the central public square with its surrounding functional space and is open to the rape fields. The building is finished with a mixture of brick walls and wooden structure roofs, and the silky ridge line covers the space. Open-ended public spaces such as an integrated service hall, shops, and exhibition halls are on the first floor, and the second floor is a relatively private working space.

photography by © Bian Lin

Teenagers Campgrounds
The campgrounds facing the mountain ravine, provide continuous public activity spaces and scattered individual dwelling unit in the wild mountainous surroundings for every culture experience team, gradually dissolves and extends into nature. The public activity area is formed by several blocks of continuous diagonal connections, including multi-functional classrooms, restaurants, and equipment rooms, etc. The accommodation units are scattered among the forests, erected from the ground, and connected by the plank road. The building is completed with a prefabricated balsa structure. The building facade consists of weather-resistant steel panels and highly reflective glass. All viewing facades are framed with a high-reflective glass floor to provide a wide view of the forest while hiding the building in the environment.Zhuyi Bed and Breakfast (B&B)
Zhuyi Bed and Breakfast (B&B) is a demonstration project for the Baita Lake Tourist Resort and is a key step in Changzhou’s construction of a Chinese featured town. The design strives to make full use of the natural advantages of the site to create an architectural space that is in harmony with the natural world, the functional theme, and the structural materials.

photography by © Huapeng Chu

The guest rooms are located in the former dormitories of the Academy of Fine Arts on the hillside behind InBamboo. They are laid out along the east-west direction facing the village. In combination with the site environment, 8 individual single-level rooms are compactly scattered in the forest and touch the ground. Visitors can take a battery car to get to the mountaintop and walk inside the houses. The design respects the original appearance of the base and preserves the rustic charm. The construction process minimizes damages to the existing vegetation. The rooms are modeled after traditional buildings, and the dexterous double-curvature roofs are generated from a circular planar topology echoing the lobby. The two-round plans are interlocked with one another. One side is a living room, and the other side is both a recreational and a living function. It includes a dressing area, a small bar table, a wardrobe, a sofa, a writing desk, and a TV. Combined with the dimensions of the flats, functional spaces such as showers and toilets are placed on both ends of the circular plan. An independent outdoor courtyard is formed in the overlapping area of the two circles. Expanding room activity space, people can fully feel the freshness and beauty of nature. It not only provides space for the preservation of large trees on site but also meets the need for internal lighting. The construction was completed with steel nail piles and wood structures. Local traditional grey tile roofs and bamboo-fabricated facades were used in conjunction with the site environment of Linpan.

photography by © Philip F. Yuan

Project Info:
Architects: Archi-Union Architects
Location: Daomingzhen, Changzhou, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Principla Architect: Philip F. Yuan
Architecture: Alex Han, Xiangping Kong, Shaoying Lei, Bing Yang
Interior: Qinhao Wen, Xiaoming Chen, Jingyan Tang, Qiucheng Li, Ju Wang
Structure: Jing Wang, Jinjiang Zhou, Lei Li, Chen Liang, Chen Liang, Qiang Zhou, Xiang Zhang, Xiaoyi Zhao
Electromechanical: Yong Liu, Ying Yu, Xi Li, Yong Wang, Dawei Wei
Digital Fabrication: Wen Zhang, Liming Zhang, Sizhong He
Project Year: 2018
Photographs: Bian Lin, Huapeng Chu, Li Han, Wei Zang, Hua Chai, Philip F. Yuan
Project Name: Bamboo Craft Village