Yi She Mountain Inn | DL Atelier

Henry David Thoreau said, “City life is millions of people being lonesome together.” Like all the mega-cities, it’s getting increasingly easier in Beijing to feel the loneliness in a vast crowd. People are mentally polarized between the obsessions of exquisite urban chaos.

60 km away from Beijing lies Ming Dynasty Tombs, surrounding it are the serrated mountains and loosely aggregated villages where tourists can find our inn. Our client wanted to reshape it into a retreat for exhausted people and an emotional place to restore the personal connections between friends, families or even strangers.

Functionally, the west part is a shared kitchen where people can only find fresh raw food. We encourage people to cook, to talk, to interact rather than eat from the menu. The kitchen will turn into an open stage by sunshine, the operation table was purposely designed in the center, the chef will be the leading performer facing his family, and the serrated mountains are the natural background, which inspires humility, tolerance, enthusiasm and poetic flavor.

The east part are 5 guestrooms sprinkled on an enclosed layout. Guests will be facing mountains or lakes from different angles, and therefore feel some sense of freedom. The spacial void and valid are interwoven together not only to blur the boundaries of segregation, but also to blur the distance between people. In springs, the brick wall will be covered by climbing plants and wild flowers, the whole courtyard will become children's paradise. More importantly, children are the best connections between different families, they have natural communication instincts which will further resolve the strangeness between adults.

We hope to deliver a quiet retreat that takes the advantages of nature resources and the distant location to restore our faith in human connections, we hope that everyone will feel less lonely here.

Location：Beijing， China

Date： 2015-2016

Site Area: 660sqm

Floor Area: 450sqm

Status：Built

Architecture &Landscape: DL Atelier

Architects: Liu Yang, Sun Xinye, Lu Xuwen, Zheng Limei, Wang Kun

Architectural Structure: Wang Chunlei

Architecture Electric: Hou Yanming

Heating and Ventilation: Zheng Limei

Interior: DL Atelier+Warming House

Photographer: Sun Haiting