Guanyun Town Center, a fusion of traditional Chinese structural details and modern style

Guanyun Town Center is located at the south foot of the Mogan Mountain, the scenic mountain & tourist destination. The site has beautiful mountain and lake views, including a large golf course nearby, which are rare in the development of a town center. The population of the town center is in three parts: families who live in town, residents of Deqing County and tourists. For better understanding of the site program needs, our team conducted interviews, questionnaires and online surveys. There’re 821 valid questionnaires collected. After a careful analysis, the four main sections of the town center are finalized—Senior living (Yi-Le college), community amenities, healthy living facilities, and featured resort. The town planning is based on the skeleton of the historical town’s layout, with the senior college sitting in the middle of the main street. The main street north end connects the residential community, and the south end is the tourists’ gateway. Healthy living programs and community amenities are along the main street. The second-floor terraces and walkways create an interesting street elevation. Those elevated walkways introduce people to the upper floor retail, and form covered walkways for ground level. There are 4 plazas and 11 courtyards scattered in the town center, which act as gathering places or landscape viewpoints. The Main Plaza in front of Yi-Le College is the intersection of the vertical and horizontal axis. It’s the main venue designed for festival gathering, plaza dancing and other events. At the south end of main street is the Waterfront Plaza, it has a nice open view. The traditional Chinese garden design here creates a peaceful environment, pavilions and waterfront walkways follow the natural lake bank, sky and trees are reflected in the water. Look further, lake and Mount Mogan are in the background. Guanyun Town Center is formed by 8 building clusters of various programs. Different from individual building design, the town center project is more an urban design, which means those buildings would be placed organically and cannot be identical. In addition, the architecture contains a fusion of traditional Chinese structural details and modern style, with clean white walls and black tiles which present a sense of belonging and intimacy. The roof design reduces the traditional detailed decor part, uses the modern method of fish scale tiles, with aluminum plates to seal the cornices, make the roof light and clean. The exposed beams use woodgrain aluminum panels instead of wood, which preserve the traditional style and ensure durability at the same time. For street elevation, the enlarged details of the rafters, hangings and lattice windows, makes the overall look more modern.