Calm Hill by IAPA DESIGN is a 1400 m2 exhibition and leisure building located near the Great Wall in northern China, where a dark schist base, a floating white upper volume, and a sequence of courtyards mediate between rice fields, wetland edges, village fabric, and mountain views.
Calm Hill Technical Information
- ArchitectsIAPA DESIGN
- LocationChengde, Beijing, China
- Gross Area1400 m2 | 15069 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years2021
- Photographs© Dison Mo
The concept of half allows architecture and landscape to be divided into two parts. Moderate concession, leaving room for each other, is restraint.
– IAPA DESIGN
Site, Landscape, and the Edge of the Great Wall
Calm Hill occupies a threshold condition between rural settlement, cultivated land, wetland, and the mountainous terrain associated with the Great Wall. Rather than treating the building as an isolated pavilion, IAPA DESIGN positions it within a broader field of views, paths, and seasonal surfaces. The approach across gravel, rice paddies, grasses, and water edges extends the architectural experience before the visitor reaches the entrance.
The massing is legible from a distance as a two-part composition: a dark, heavy base of stacked schist stone and a white upper volume with a textured render surface. This contrast establishes a productive ambiguity. The lower level appears embedded in the ground, while the upper floor reads as a suspended object above the agricultural landscape. The building therefore oscillates between settlement-like permanence and a more abstract presence within the field.
Long views across reeds and water reinforce this relationship. From the wetland edge, the white volume is seen against green hills and reflected surfaces, while from the approach path it is framed by crops and grasses. These sequences make the landscape an active component of the project rather than a pictorial background. The building gains meaning through changes in distance, elevation, and atmospheric conditions.
Introversion, Extroversion, and Courtyard Strategy
The plan is organized around a central courtyard, producing an inward-looking spatial structure that responds to the exposed rural setting. This introversion is not absolute. Cantilevered Corten-framed windows, terraces, roof areas, and viewing platforms extend the building outward, allowing selected views toward fields, trees, and mountains. The project is most effective where these two tendencies overlap, creating rooms that are enclosed yet visually porous.
The entrance sequence relies on compression and release. Visitors pass through a deep threshold framed by rough stone piers and charred timber walls before arriving at the first courtyard. This passage narrows the field of view and heightens the transition from open landscape to constructed interior. Framed glimpses of trees, moss, water, and screens appear ahead, preparing the visitor for a slower spatial rhythm.
The courtyard system operates at several scales. Some spaces are intimate, with black reflective water, Corten steel planters, moss islands, boulders, and multi-trunk trees. Others support social uses such as tea, exhibitions, leisure, and informal gatherings. The result is not a single monumental void but a network of calibrated outdoor rooms, each adjusting degrees of exposure, enclosure, reflection, and visual depth.
Material Atmosphere and Local Tactility
The material palette combines schist stone, charred timber, mao bamboo, Corten steel, white textured render, water, moss, and reclaimed wood. These materials are not applied as surface decoration. They form a layered environmental register in which weight, tactility, darkness, and reflection contribute to the spatial experience. The use of local and familiar materials also prevents the building from becoming detached from its regional setting.
Stone and blackened timber give the lower levels a protective character. Their rough surfaces establish a sense of mass and enclosure, particularly in the entrance passage and the more secluded courtyards. Against this density, bamboo screens and planted gardens introduce permeability and softness. Water surfaces further complicate the reading of boundaries, reflecting walls, trees, and sky while visually expanding compact spaces.
The project depends on contrast as an ordering device. Rough stone is set against smooth microcement floors, dark timber against white plaster, solid walls against reflective pools, and oxidized Corten steel against green moss. These oppositions are controlled rather than theatrical. They create a sequence of tactile differences that supports the building’s measured pace and gives each threshold a distinct material identity.
Framing, Light, and Programmatic Experience
Openings in the white upper volume vary in proportion and depth, often appearing as Corten-lined boxes that puncture or project from the facade. These windows do more than admit light. They frame partial views of courtyards, trees, sky, and distant landscape, turning movement through the building into a sequence of visual fragments. The irregularity of these apertures resists a single frontal reading and encourages changing relationships between viewer and scene.
Inside, double-height lounge and gallery spaces are shaped by controlled daylight. Long skylights cast linear shadows across textured plaster walls, giving the interiors a temporal quality as light shifts during the day. Reclaimed timber floors, antique wood elements, dark ceramic vessels, cane chairs, and heavy timber tables extend the tactile register of the courtyards into the interior without dissolving the distinction between inside and outside.
The program combines reception, exhibition, model display, lounge, dining, offices, terraces, and roof leisure areas across multiple levels. This arrangement supports a gradual movement from public reception to more private rooms and elevated viewing spaces. The building functions less as a conventional display container than as a constructed itinerary, in which exhibition, hospitality, landscape observation, and retreat are interwoven through changes in section, threshold, and light.
About IAPA DESIGN
IAPA DESIGN designed Calm Hill in Chengde, Beijing, China, in 2021, with lead designers Paul Peng, Ding Yu, Yang Yang, Jiawei Ye, and Shibing Wei. The project approach balances introverted courtyard architecture with outward connections to landscape, using locally sourced materials such as charred timber, mao-bamboo, and schist stone to create an immersive, multi-sensory experience.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Lead Designers: Paul Peng, Ding Yu, Yang Yang, Jiawei Ye, Shibing Wei
- Photographer: Dison Mo
