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This project is renovated from a Prairie style villa, with an inner-corridor linking several rooms. There are two kinds of interior heights: 4.8 meters and 3.5 meters. This building needed to be transformed into a space that could accommodate an architecture bookstore（Juanzong Books）, children's bookstore (Yishan Books), restaurant, gallery, and office.
The current building is a brick-concrete structure, and it is necessary to plan the use of internal space while keeping the original load-bearing walls and facade openings completely unchanged.
We used the original higher foyer, living room and dining room, as the entrance lobby, the reading area and the coffee area, at the same time, the three lower rooms near the end as the children's bookstore, where it is quiet and private.
The original entrance on the north side is directly connected to the driving road, the east side is facing the other villas, and the west side is close to the noisy walkway. The site around the building has little specific sense of place. We added a courtyard on the east, north and west sides, which enriched the spatial depth of approaching the building, and also reserved spaces for future outdoor activities. Two trees were planted in the forecourt on the north to provide some shade in summer. The original courtyard wall was converted into a bench because the property management restricted its height. The two courtyards on the west and east sides are simply enclosed by low hedges, and the existing plants are preserved as much as possible.
Both the architecture bookstore and the children’s bookstore with individual spatial logics are contained under the same roof. The space of the architecture bookstore is continuous and extroverted, while the children’s bookstore is introverted and wrapped. These two are slightly different but harmonious.
For the architecture bookstore, the view is led directly to the courtyard through the window on the restaurant’s wall as you enter from the porch to the lobby, and the space will appear deeper once more layers are added. The three picture windows in the southwest corner of the original living room and dining room were removed, and the other two on the west were replaced with folding doors that allow people to walk through into courtyard. With the openable facade, the space continuity of architecture bookstore and the restaurant is further extended to the courtyard.
For the children's bookstore, the wooden wainscot makes the tone of this space warm and soft. We hope that the children's space is as comfortable as home and a place where people can sit down. Wooden bookshelves are placed against the wall, benches are set up by the window, and low tables and bookcases are placed in the middle of the rooms, which creates an introverted and wrapped feeling by lowering the focus of entire space. Whether sitting in front of the window or under the lamp, it makes people feel comfortable and relaxed.
The low-rise building, simple walls, and picturesque scenery blend together. The indoor space of the architecture bookstore is continuous, and the open interface extends the feeling outside, creating a connection with nature. The interior of the children's bookstore does not have colorful decorations, and the architects use a soft birch color as the main color tone, returning to the most familiar and daily environment for children. In such an environment, children can focus on reading.
genarchitects was found in Shanghai in 2013, under the leadership of three principals, FAN Beilei, KONG Rui and XUE Zhe, genarchitects engages in comprehensive architectural design practice. genarchitects insists focusing on the genuineness of designing and constructing, and hopes to find a calm and sincere answer towards the complicated and uncertain reality by discreetly dealing with site and functional requirements.
genarchitects' work and study has been widely published in journals, as well as in books released by Thames & Hudson Press, Birkhäuser, and other important publishers. genarchitects has been invited to various exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Sino-Europe Invitational Architectural Exhibition, "Towards a Critical Pragmatism: Contemporary Architecture in China" exhibition at Harvard GSD.
