Village Restaurant

The village restaurant is located at the entrance of a small hill village in the suburbs of Nanjing city, in Yangzi River Delta, China. It is surrounded by woods and rice fields, and has a certain distance to the village center. The core requirement of architectural design is to create a catering space that can enhance and present the characteristics of the rural site, providing a special food experience for vacationers.

Inspired by the collective banquets tradition in rural China, the architecture formal strategy is adopting a settlement form of small buildings surrounding the atrium. Arrange relatively concentrated dining areas in the atrium to create a unique rural atmosphere of collective enjoyment of delicious food. Each small building volume extends slightly outward to ensure a better landscape view for private boxes. In the area near the rice fields on the southwest side, utilizing the height difference between the building and farmland, scattered outdoor dining areas are arranged to form a close relationship between foods and crops.

The building adopts the tile sloping roof of vernacular farmhouses, as well as the commonly used cement grid brick in rural China, however in a way of modern curtain walls, which creates a sustained tension between tradition and contemporaneity.

As night fell, the building gradually lit up against the dark forest background, like a huge lantern shed light on the entrance of the village.