XIAOBANG Since 1999 Hunan Cuisine Restaurant

Water Garden Around the Islands

Surrounded by high-rise buildings, the first feeling is crowds, downward, and loud. The design would challenge the transformation of these negative issues into positive energy. The new place seeks to decrease depressing emotions, creating a safe and private space for dining in a poetry garden. An urban Peach Blossom Spring replaces the parking beside the street, reviving the vigor there.

The architect creates a garden composite of forest and water in a contemporary context. The island inspires the garden—a shallow mirrored waterscape around the restaurant in the south and east. Camphor trees’ canopy covers the garden and gradually rises from the restaurant to the street. The trees cover the sights from the street and high-rise buildings, cut down the noise, and bring a SHANSHUI garden for people.

The garden set different screens from the wall, matched with trees to create routes and vistas, introduced to the road, and for sequence vision experience. The dark metal panel wall reflects the trees, waves, and spots; the water mirrors the trees, screens, and buildings, and the waves ripple several times. The waterscape highlights the sight, touch, and auditory sense.

A zigzag circle road of different widths with open islands flourishes as walk scenery. Tree pits plant camphor trees made of tree islands in the water. In the morning, the mist meets the light through the woods and falls into the water, occasionally creating the Tyndall Effect. The façade of the garden, cut several holes, shows a piece of vistas for passersby.

Islands Shape the Mountain Road

Stroll into the restaurant along the water walkway across the trees’ path. The entrance reception integrates diverse routes in a circle space. It introduces people to the corridor, the public dining area, the bar, the staircase, the elevator hall, and the seafood-showing area.

The terrace of the private dining room spreads into the water garden. The façade of glass dispels its edge, extends the view from the interiors into the exteriors, and also reflects the landscape. These solo islands of private dining rooms connect the garden to the interiors with its terrace. The curved wall around the island from in to out and the inside surface defines the inner circulation. Following the island’s outline, the interior corridor forms a continuous space. Based on the elements of mountains, corridor walls carve out the alcove and niche, exhibiting in greens and artworks. The entrance of the private dining room, hidden in the curved corridor (like the cave), remains a purist scene for people.

Interiors are decorated with timber veneer and velvet fabrics only. The wall surface is made of several mode panels in different textures. A digital collage process simulates and organizes the natural and random texture of the whole wall, which is constructed based on the numbers and coordinates of all materials on the site. Simple elements keep people’s attention on the space and dining sense. Dark flooring and surroundings’ colors make the place quiet, cozy, and immersed.

This project symbolized The Peach Blossom Spring as a garden between architecture and urban, resolving the existing issues and strengthening the landscape experience and un-urban sense. The island element cohesion the language in the garden and interiors; the mountain road and canyon shape the function, creating a secluded garden restaurant in the city.