Shanghai Zhongfang Architectural Design Co., Ltd.: Winner of the Architect of the Year Awards 2025. Located in Suzhou’s North Station New City, Xichen Shangyuan reinterprets the spatial essence of the Suzhou garden within a contemporary urban context. The design transforms the classical ideas of sequence, layering, and framed views into a modern residential composition, forming a fluid relationship between architecture, landscape, and light.

Horizontality defines the architecture, echoing the calmness of Huanxiu Lake. Transparent glass façades, slender eaves, and restrained detailing create a sense of precision and weightlessness. The palette of silver-white metal and warm wood tones balances modern rationality with human warmth.

The lifestyle pavilion, as the project’s prototype, integrates curved glass, deep overhangs, and mirrored water surfaces to dissolve the boundary between building and nature. Inside, a hospitality-inspired sequence and reflective ceiling lighting evoke the fluidity of lake ripples, extending the outdoor atmosphere inward.

Rooted in Suzhou’s cultural temperament yet oriented toward contemporary life, Xichen Shangyuan articulates a new paradigm of lakeside living — disciplined, poetic, and unbounded.

Project Details:-
Firm
Shanghai Zhongfang Architectural Design Co., Ltd.

Architect
SHANGHAI ZF ARCHITECTS

Project Name
Xichen Shangyuan

Project Category
Residential Built

Team
Lü Haibei、Zhou Huayong

Project Location
Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province

Country
China

Photography ©Credit
©liwei

Founded in 1979, SHANGHAI ZF ARCHITECTS has a history of 45 years. It is an influential class-A comprehensive design company in Shanghai architecture industry. We provide design services and technical support for the whole process of project planning, planning, architecture, interior, landscape and civil air defense. The company adopts the joint-stock operation mode which is held by the main management and technical backbone, and relies on the cooperation of nearly 400 professionals from various disciplines. Adhering to the design concept of full control of high-quality architecture, the company is committed to creating original works full of architectural ideals and professionalism. In recent years, it has won more than 300 awards in many fields at home and abroad, and provides quality design services for the TOP100 real estate enterprises in China. Attaches great importance to the technological progress and specialized leading, Shanghai earlier BIM team design company, is a center of Shanghai residential development prefabricated architectural design of the backbone units. At present, ZF Architecture is committed to urban renewal, TOD, rental housing, future community and other emerging fields of exploration and research. Zhongfang construction has completed more than 20 kinds of patented technologies, and has been recognized as a high-tech enterprise.