GWP Architects: Winner of World Design Awards 2021. Chan Town Showroom is located within the Qianxin Scenic Area of Longnan County, Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, which is situated at the Qianshan Mountain, a stretch of the northeastern foothills of the Jiu-lian Mountain National Nature Reserve with an average altitude of 600 meters. The half-moon shaped site is halfway on a mountainside, vaguely visible even before arrival while circling up the mountain road. The north side of the site is wide open with unblocked views towards ridges from nearby and afar. The south side bounds the site against the mountain in the back yet divided by a curved footpath spiraling up in the south. The most significant physical condition of the site, on a separate note, is the 8-meter height difference from the east to the west.

The site is currently being used as a temporary parking lot, a critical functional program for the entire Scenic Area. It is not feasible to excavate at a different spot in the forest for another parking lot. Therefore, how to insert the showroom on the site while preserving the current parking function becomes especially important.

The design concept of the GWP team is to let the showroom “float” above the parking area. Meanwhile the incoming visitors from the east and west ends circulate towards each other at different heights until converging at the center of the site. The visitor traffic flow follows the terrain of the mountain like a symbol of Taiji and fully merges into the site, eliminating the visitors’ senses of height difference while they are wandering around the site with a natural transition in between the 8-meter drop. The floating showroom can also be vertically separated from the parking space so that both can exist in harmony with minimal mutual impact.

Project Details
Firm
GWP Architects

Project Name
Chan Town Showroom

Architect/Designer
John Zhang

World Design Awards Category
Cultural Concept

Project Location
Ganzhou

Team
John Zhang, Ping Wang

Country
China

Photography ©Credit
©GWP Architects

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GWP Architects was founded in 2012 in Boston,USA,and began to engage in urban planning and architectural design research. After several years of research, upholding the concept of “establishing a global wisdom alliance”,the core team established HongKong group company and Guangzhou Company, responsible for projects in China and Asia, the works have been highly recognized by the industry and have repeatedly won well-known design awards at home and abroad. The company takes “the balance of creativity and practicality” as the design tenet, and its services cover architectural design, urban planning, landscape design, and interior design.