China Overseas Property (Nanjing Branch)• Noble Mountain Sales Center | Jianfeng Huang

Nanjing, where the sales center is situated, had served as the capital of six Chinese dynasties and is rich in cultural heritages of Qinhuai River. In addition, Xuanwu Lake and Jizin Mountain in the city are gifts bestowed by nature. By respecting the existing natural environment and cultural context of the site, the designers conceived the interior design of the sales center and innovatively interpreted the mood and history of the city via contemporary spatial expressions. The design is in tune with the current lifestyles, while also adapting to the peace and calmness of Nanjing people at heart.

The designers composedly and slowly created a quiet and beautiful ambience and spirit of space full of oriental wisdom, as if a craftsman carefully engraves a “seal”. Zijing Mountain casts its green silhouette upon the rippling water, while sunlight penetrates through the trees with thick branches and leaves and lingers among the cracks of the jagged rocks. Such a serene, deep and relaxing environment forms a picturesque courtyard view and serves as a fantastic prelude to spatial experience. 

Open composition of space and circulations smoothly connect the interior and exterior of space. The glass curtain wall and folding door demarcate different functional areas but will not affect the transparency of space. The log and stones with natural textures were applied to spaces of varying scales, while walls and partitions run through the furniture facilities and decorative details. The mixed dark and light hues help endow the commercial project with a sense of belonging and sustained value. 

The designers abandoned symbolic, iconic, grand and striking visual languages widely applied to property design and looked for appropriate approaches to the design from nature and leisurely lifestyles of contemporary Nanjing people. Water, rocks and log form courtyard landscapes and give the space a Buddhist mood. Stepping on the winding stone path, people can see soft lights among the green woods and encounter a teahouse nestled at the foot of Zijin Mountain.

The designers constructed interactive and fluid interior and exterior spaces to enhance diversified sensory experiences of people and form narrative logics of the inner space on the basis. The artistic foyer connects the artistic property models vertically, while a straight corridor runs through the horizontal space. Sometimes it is possible for the corridor to interact with outdoor landscapes vertically. There are also some winding paths that lead to various areas of the regular space. To sum up, the designers created a truly flexible experiential exhibition center that allows people to constantly move, converge, connect and disperse in the space.

The artistic foyer is a space enclosed with thin and transparent silk and linen cloth as well as timber. The designers create blurred and connected the interior and exterior interface to “loosen” the corner, thereby leaving space for visitors to experience a “sense of ritual” and other feelings.

Four shadowy walls descend directly from the top but stop at the floor, leaving another gap to “breathe” outward.

The space is both blurred and highlighted. The design “unfolds” forms from different perspectives, thereby creating surprising spatial effects for people to view and experience. After an extended treatment, the interior and exterior of space were linked together to form a dialogue between them.

To avoid the dull horizontal and vertical functional layout of the apartment building with courtyard, the designers sought to create differentiated functional areas in the interior space to realize the layered spatial logic of "starting, developing, twisting and merging" and, on the basis, designed circulations that play a guiding role in people’s behavior.

In addition, based on the introspective experience and intuitive expression of feelings in aesthetics and art, the designers created a quiet atmosphere that is tune with the psyche and feeling of people. On one side of the water feature, an openable and closable glass door eliminates the physical boundaries of walls and windows, thus facilitating the perceptions into the interior and exterior space.

Plain-colored decorative fabrics blend into the quiet and deep wood veneer backdrop walls and present a unique material quality in the play of light and shadow. Dark & light and bright & pale hues are not separate but interpenetrated, thus achieving a uniformity of spatial quietness and serenity.