Suzhou - Zhuo Zheng Yuan (Humble Administrator's Garden) 蘇州 - 拙政園

One could call  Zhuo Zheng Yuan - Humble Administrator's Garden, "representative" of the Jiang Su style gardens in China.  It is generally referred to as one of the four great Chinese Gardens.

The work on Humble Administrator's Garden started in 1510, by a retired Imperial Envoy and poet of the Ming Dynasty, Wang Xiancheng.  Wang worked together with the renowned artist, Wen Zhengming 文徵明, reflecting upon the hermit lifestyle which Wang longed to lead, much in the same manner as Tao Yuanming 陶淵明.

Humble Administrator's Garden carries a theme of Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and has pavilions and scenic spots arranged around the 4 seasons.  Physically the garden is divided into the East, Middle and West Gardens - all together the garden is about 13.4 hectares.  Humble Administrator's Garden was inscribed on UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997.

Humble Administrator's Garden has such fame (together with the famous novel written in 1759, Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 by Cao Zueqin 曹雪芹, making reference to the garden as its backdrop), I had high expectations.  The gardens were beautiful, and rich with techniques of garden making, but we did not find much clues regarding architecture and its interrelation with nature; more so because of the garden's vast dimension, "architecture" and "garden" tend to be quite stand-off-ish from each other.

entry gate of Humble Administrator's Garden

this is my favourite place in the garden. The way the corridor touches the water is so delicate and beautiful, not only pleasant to look at, but interesting to walk upon

the corridor then climbs up to reach the pavilion gently, wraps itself around as if supported by the Taihu rocks...

More readings on Humble Administrator's Garden:

TAO - Terebess Asia Online

Wangjianshuo's blog

Wikipedia

After throwing away concrete there is throwing away barrier.....捨てバリ

Admittedly I have experienced a cultural shock (amongst many others.. during this construction process) when I received these site images few days ago.

We received a call from our concerned client of M House, regarding the bad weather and how the beautiful timber roof structure was getting wet on site.

So this is what happened as the result.....

when we requested for the roof structure to be covered up before the roof goes up, we imagined a tent-like effect, like, one big sheet of plastic over the entire house......BUT... ended up each and every roof rafter was individually wrapped....can you imagine the amount of labour and material went in the "gift wrapping" of roof structure...... unfortunately the site is at a high wind area, therefore the plastic sheeting will be blown off in no time if we are doing a big tent.....

laying the ceiling timber in stripes of 90mm wide boards...like putting up timber flooring on the ceiling......very labour intensive.... in the snow........

the black material is nicknamed "sutebari - 捨てバリ" ("barrier to throw away"), it is waterproof membrane made of modified bitumen/ asphalt (SBS or SBR). By adding polymer or rubber to the straight asphalt, it counters some of the classic problems of the material such as longevity, cold temperature tolerance etc. This layer was to go onto the roof, probably 2 or 3 steps after the timber ceiling (the roof battens, insulation, and then waterproof membrane) but we now have to put this extra layer down to protect the timber ceiling from bad weather.  Because it is only for temporary purpose, it is "the barrier to throw away"

view from inside of the house under the timber ceiling. originally we have selected a timber ceiling board of almost double the width, but when we saw the timber samples, the colouration was much more pink than the rafters.  Considering the colour compatibility and balancing cost, we ended up changing to this 90mm width format....which means double the work........ how we love our builder.......!

All up!

Everyone got so excited on site for M House, that they decided to finish the entire roof structure in total of 2 days! (it was scheduled to be finished tomorrow...but it was already done yesterday 10am.....)

These photos are about 1 day old, right now the builders are putting up ceiling lining in timer, which also acts as bracing for lateral stability of the roof rafters.

It is quite an amazing experience for us (can you feel my excitement? I hope you can!) that something we have drawn is getting built RIGHT THIS MOMENT (which is exciting enough as it is, as always...) somewhere across the other side of the world, to the precision that we have requested and specified down to millimetres.  Although it is common that architects design from overseas these days, but the normal practice of making that happen is to engage a local architect to handle the daily occurrences on site, as well as corresponding with builders.  The way we are doing is not so common.....in fact, it is unheard of for me......but then it is the way to ensure delivery of quality we proud ourselves of.

good weather in the morning, everyone on site was excited and speeded through most of the rafters

view from inside the house. It looks just like our perspective (below)!

internal perspective presented to client

junction at rafter and plinth

end piece of the roof rafter. the timber batten on the ridge of roof rafter is the temporary bracing and will be removed once the timber ceiling lining is in place. it is important to ensure safety throughout construction.  weather was starting get bad, luckily it was all done!

can I say I love it? I LOVE it....!

One in One and One go only!

The roof rafters are finally going up after the winter break for M House.

We could not be more impressed.....they look exactly like our models except in 1:1 scale, and it is the real stuff!  The accuracy on site is amazing.... Imagine, all the notching and cutting of the timber elements are done by human hand!!

first, the builders had to put up a "土台 (plinth)" along the top of the perimeter concrete walls, for the rafters to rest on. the notches are where the rafters will rest upon, and were notched one by one with human hand....

the perimeter wall is 19.5m at its longer side... it is impossible to do the plinth in a single piece of timer. Where the plinth joint is, this is how the pieces are connected, through tongue and groove connection (cut by hand again...) and bolted to ensure stability.  here it is clear how the notches are slanted at the inside (to either side of the joint) to meet the angle of the roof rafters.

slowly, one by one....the rafters are going up.....

the bolted connection at the ridge...after much testing, we have decided that the diameter of the individual bolt was more important than the bolt being counter-sunken and flush at face (this way the diameter of the bolt is bigger). I think it looks ok, not as distracting as it could have been.  (see the snow in the background?  it was snowing heavily that even the trains stopped running, we were so concerned that there would be further delay on site.....but look at the progress!)

get a taste of how the space would be like after completion... we can hardly wait!

this is how it looks like when the rafters rest on the plinth.. by sitting the rafter into the notched plinth there is extra stability and less visible hardware, makes the ensemble much crispier and cleaner....but of course much more work and labour intensive!  God is in the detail......

Getting organised

We are proud to present our new library at Facet Studio - da-lah!

If there is a competition for material library at small architectural practices, I believe we have a good chance at winning it.  To be organised is to be efficient - and to be ready for expansion.

Our new staff's first task was to sort and complete our material / trade literature library. It is very important to our efficiency and design process, to be able to visualise the materials' application onto our buildings, and to be able to compare and match materials compatibility. Building materials and technologies are constantly updating, importance of keeping in the loop is needless to say.

colourful cats and spiky openings

Yesterday we have received photos of M House in the snow....deep deep snow.

Don't you just love the quirky Japanese? to stop people from trespassing the site they have employed bright orange cats to scare people off.....

Well, back to work.

So the builders have removed the formwork around window openings today. Given the building was covered in snow and temperature lingering around 0 degree, there really isn't much to be done on site.... so everyone was in the factory chopping up timber roof rafters....

the green panels on the wall are the styrofoam insulation panels, casted in together with the concrete. I wonder why people in Sydney don't do this? it makes things much easier, all done in one go.

can you see the spikes to the inside of the opening? They were there to hold down the formwork, and will be removed with force...literally....with hammers....one by one....

here you can see how the insulation panels are casted in with concrete at the opening.  Bottom of the opening is slightly slanted for future installation of flashing underneath window frames, allowing water to drain out if in any case water was trapped in the frame.  This will prevent leakage at window and damage to window frame.

Suzhou Museum - I M Pei

After seeing -and impressed by- many of the gardens in Suzhou (see HERE), I had high hopes for I M Pei's Suzhou Museum.  Especially having seen his Luce Memorial Chapel in Taiwan.

The Suzhou Museum is all about modern interpretation of the traditional methods utilised in Chinese garden-making.  Whilst the Suzhou Museum employs some of the techniques and elements - such as pond, rockery, diminishing of perspectives, view borrowing...and more..... - the entry, the first point one encounters, already makes a very Westernised decision by exposing people directly to the view beyond.

Beautiful building..... but the liveliness and strength evident in Luce Chapel was nowhere be found.

at the entry forecourt to the museum. sophisticated proportion and material selection was very calming

entry forecourt

automatic doors to entry airlock, when closed, formed some interesting illusional effect together with the oriental suggestion by utilising the circles.

entry porch. when the doors opened (comparing the last photo) the view was taken through the building, directly to the view outside the building opposite the entry. Which was something quite so contradicting to the traditional Chinese garden philosophy - which is suggestive, and a lot of play with imagination by manipulating what is shown and disguised. The moment these doors opened the build-up on approaching the building was instantly questioned.

inside of the museum.  beautiful skylight effects.

looking directly up at one of the skylights

ceiling detail inside the museum gallery rooms. lined fully with timber, the gallery rooms were warm and and elaborated, formed a strong contrast to the architecture itself.

window element reminiscent of the traditional gardens

view of the entry building from the internal courtyard

internal courtyard with formal elements of pond, bridge, and rockery. Can you see the difference comparing with other gardens such as Huan Xiu Shan Zhuang (“Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty”) or Master of Nets Garden?   By the way one has to cross the bridge to circulate from one side to the other side of the Museum.

More reading on Suzhou Museum:

Suzhou Museum official site

Wangjiangshuo's blog

World Architecture News

What defines the edge

Starting up 2011 with discussion on how to define the edge of the roof.

As you know, with M House, the roof is the physical presence of our design philosophy (read more HERE); how that roof finishes itself at the outside of the house, where visible by whoever walking past it, will set its first impression.

Again, we have constructed a 1:1 mock-up of the roof edge to help us thinking and deciding (by the way our builder, skeptical and resistant at first, now LOVES the idea of making 1:1 mock-ups!  They see the value in checking prior to construction on site - saves so much time and cost!)

our first go was to align the edge of the roof plane with the edge of the exposed timber rafters. By doing so the entire composition of the roof (rafter, ceiling/ bracing, insulation, roof sheeting) becomes one element, and was inevitably visually heavy.

we then tried pushing out the roof plane (ceiling/bracing, insulation, roof sheeting) proud of the roof rafters by the thickness of the fascia board. What this does is starting to break down the mass of the roof composition visually and gives it a slightly finer presence at the edge.

then we pushed the roof plane out further.. further... stop! It looked good there! Let's see how much we have pushed it out..

now the roof plane and the rafters are visually distinguishable, and gives a sharper definition of the roof edge!

the cavity between ceiling bracing and the roof sheeting is where the insulation will be. The cavity is 20mm bigger than the insulation material in order to have some airflow for ventilating the moisture during the wet summer seasons

looking between the rafters towards the outside of the house....the gap between rafters, roof plane and top of wall will be filled with clear glass, so the extension of roof rafter to the outside of building will be visible.....and permitting natural light to enter the building (the timber beam over top of the wall will be continuous rather than broken as seen here in mock-up)

testing the edge gutter....it was initially a box gutter at the edge of the roof plane (so hidden behind the fascia board) but for practical reasons it is now hanging out at the edge... we decided to go with the bracket on the right, which has fixing at the same level as the bracket (the one on the left has fixing points above the bracket) so the gutter will be raised higher to better catch the roof water, and allows for more room for gradient along the gutter.  The gutter will be in the similar silver colour as the brackets.