Nine House | Studio QI Architects

Xitang is the epitome of Jiangnan, manifested by its bridges, waterway, boats, sticky-rice pastry and teahouses. It is a place of profound culture, however, filled with the scent of mundane life and provides home-like sojourn. The project is located to the north of the ancient Xitang town, an area allocated by the government as the expansion of the old town to compensate for the lack of social diversity. The project is at the very boundary of the new expansion area, aiming to be a boutique hotel with a few guest rooms. 

The identity of the project is made clear from the very beginning, which is a dwelling filled with abundant social activities. It is much more than a hotel. Other than the guest rooms, it provides a platform that stimulates communications where poets, artists, architects, and all art-lovers aggregate and interact with authentic Jiangnan lifestyle. The project is very different from the conventional repetitive lodge hotels, that it embraces the notion of ‘gregarious lifestyle’ and returns to the state of the simplicity of water town. Nine House itself is a self-contained micro-society. 

The geographic characteristics determine the typology of the settlement. Xitang is weaved by lanes and alleys, crossed by rivers and banks; the residents are piled up upon the shore, shifting and growing organically. The seams between the spaces are later readapted by the residents, where it is narrow there will be a room, where it is wide there will be a courtyard, where it is near the water there will be a corridor, where it is interconnected there will be a new alley. Both the ‘space in process’ and the ‘space as end-result’ are intertwined nonlinearly, thus the water town emerges as a rich 3-dimensional accumulation of grey spaces. The design is infused with a dynamic coalition of space, which addresses the topic of ‘transparency’ in architecture, where the multiplicity of events, the layers of visual connections, physical interactions and the complexity of impulse and moments are crucial to its experience. 

The building form of the hotel is a miniature of the ancient town. The design team extract building blocks from the original typology and stacks them dynamically, leaving gaps in between. Connections between the blocks are made possible by the bridges, while the negative space under the bridges is forming a contrast with the river bank. The ‘block & bridge’ forms the basic pattern of the design scheme. 

A few scattering blocks are stacked to be the main volume of the architecture. The fluctuating blocks have formed sky well and patio; the shifting volumes has created bamboo lane and courtyard. After the scrutiny that lasts three years, the architecture aggregations, namely nine houses with diverse spatial experience, has come into being. 

From the outlook, Nine House blends well with the surroundings. While from within, people can discover all the elements that compose an ancient water town. The architect has managed to merge the eight abstract concepts of ‘bridge’, ’alley’, ’yard’, ’corridor’, ’room’, ’hall’, ’water’, and’ shore’ into the space and create plentiful spatial experiences.

Associated Design Jian Huang, Hongfei Yan, Kitty Lee

Technical Partners ADCAS

Location Xitang, China

Project Size 500sqm

Program(s) Boutique Hotel, Restaurants, Gallery

Number of Units 6

Date of Completion of Design Work 2013

Date of Completion of Construction 2016