Research on white crane lake visitors centre

To continue on my initial research where I wrote about the Jinghe new city culture and art centre, for this blog I will be doing further research on one of my chosen designs to research about for my project this term which is the white crane lane visitors centre by Archperience Design. 

Fig 1. Archperience Design white crane lane visitors centre, 2023

This building located in Yingtan China is an architectural project designed to attract tourists to the location. This was the reason why the designers went with a modern style of architecture. 

The site of an architectural design project plays a key role as a determinant of how the design would take its form and function. This was what the architects did, instead of using the traditional Chinese style of architectural design, on visiting the site decided that it was not going to work because of the surroundings nature around the site which was surrounded by lakes and forests. According to Alvarez, (2023) “Rather than overtly associating with the local residential architectural style or excessively emphasizing traditional materials and methods of construction, the new building would instead accentuate the natural qualities and atmosphere of the site of White Crane Lake itself.” Based on this, my project this term would have a genuine relationship with the chosen site making it a much more successful project. I will research on the site for things like views, which can determine where the building would face and where features like Windows would be located, the sun movement and how it affects the building, my design is going to have a skylight allowing natural light into the building, so, the rising and setting of the sun would be important. Also, in terms of the sun, my design has a terrace and garden so, the building building would be positioned to cast some shadows on the garden.

The architects chose to work with transparent glass throughout the curved wall as a representation of the site. The other material used was bamboo skins which form as an envelope around the building form illustrating how the immediate environment forms a cloudy effect at sunrise. Despite lacking the smooth and soft feel of real bamboo, it was selected because of its durability, low care requirements, and general affordability (ArchDaily, 2023).  The materials used for this building were cost-effective because they were locally sourced and are durable to the environment. Incorporating this idea into my project this term by getting materials that are sustainable and can be gotten locally would help in the financial management of a project like this. 

From my understanding of this, architects put a lot of things into consideration for their buildings, from how the site impacts the design to the right materials suitable for the area and surroundings, to how this design would be suitable for the people that are going to use it. I have talked about the site earlier, not for the materials, most modern or futuristic buildings tend to use glass as one of their main materials, and the style of my building being a neo-futuristic building, will also have these characteristics. For more details knowledge about the materials, I will post a research blog on the materials to be used for this project.

In summary, making an architectural design centred around the data obtained from the chosen site is a good way to get a well-interactive design, and also rather than spending a large amount of money on the importation of foreign materials, research on locally sourced materials that can be sustainable to the environment and efficient to the design. 

In my next post, I will write about the data that I have collected from my site analysis.