The Floating Courtyard – Underground Entrance Plaza Renovation | Deep Origin Lab

The Floating Courtyard is located in the Science and Technology City of Suzhou Huqiu District. This renovation of the entrance plaza of the underground parking lot is a significant part of the public space system of Fashion Waterfront Longfor Starry Street. Deep Origin Lab went through the complete process from design to construction of the project. The olive-shaped spatial form of the original sunken plaza determines the basic geometry and axial conditions for the place. While retaining openness, the design reshapes the interface landscape from bottom to top through two means of “Contexture” and “Patch”, creating an experiential place from the gap, that further bridges the spatial relationship for the urban environment.

The design extends the existing stairway. The open interface of the parking lot to the plaza is divided into three doorways based on the fire compartments. The floating courtyard is composed of a translucent fabric membrane structure floating like a jellyfish above, and a suspended landscape garden below.

The membrane not only becomes the canopy of the plaza, creating a field of embrace and sky peek but also serves as a woven body to guide the flow and connect several outdoor main nodes. Steel columns sit on the basis extension of the original concrete columns, the membrane structure is balanced by the suspension and support together, cutting down the inevitable structures in the plaza.

As a patch repair approach, the landscape garden unifies the plaza space into an integral surface layer and combines the upper and lower layers into a continuous form of landscape. Planting beds are randomly distributed in all sorts of directions, forming discrete gardens and various figure-ground relationships. The same geometric forms of window and cave-like shapes, in diverse combinations, constitute a sequence of unified and multiple picturesque garden scenes. As a functional object that defines the boundaries of activity area and paving materials, the railings also become an element in the composition and interact with people’s behaviors.

The facade is made of wood-textured translucent glass and the light surface edge, renders the entire rustic terrazzo surface like a thin shell lifted from the ground in night view. With the coordination between the projectors set in the planting beds and the lights on the columns, the surface of the membrane structure becomes a receptor for light. The light elements in the site merging create an immersive and interactive artistic lighting atmosphere, erasing the materiality while transforming this underground entrance plaza into a leading spectacular stage after sunset.

Project Info

Architects: Deep Origin Lab
Area: 780 m²
Year: 2023
Country: Su Zhou Shi, China
Photographs: Hao Chen, Qinrong Liu
Lead Architects: Qinrong Liu
Construction: Shanghai Biaoding Hejia Technology Co., Ltd.
Structure Design: 广州瑞华建筑设计有限公司、上海标定合嘉科技有限公司
Developer: Suzhou Science and Technology City Kexin Cultural Tourism Development Co., Ltd.
Client: 爱城市智库（深圳）有限公司