L Villa Garden by July&Partners: A Choreography of Landscape and Space in Shenzhen

Located in Shenzhen’s Mirs Bay, L Villa Garden occupies a liminal site where mountains, sea, and urban proximity converge. Enveloped on three sides by topography and facing Hong Kong’s distant skyline, the garden negotiates the dual conditions of introspection and outward view. Designed by July&Partners in collaboration with architecture and interiors studio Abraham, the project establishes a fluid relationship between landscape and built form.

L Villa Garden Technical Information

• Landscape Design¹: July & Partners
• Architecture & Interior Design: Abraham
• Location: Shenzhen, China
• Gross Area: 877 m² | 9,439 Sq. Ft.
• Photographs: © Zhu Hai

The key to evoking a far-reaching sense of water lies in concealing and disrupting its flow through intricate techniques, rather than highlighting its source and termination.

– July & Partners Designers

L Villa Garden Photographs

Spatial Strategy: Movement, Framing, and the Sequencing of Experience

The conceptual framework is grounded in a dialogue between “vitality” and “serenity,” two seemingly opposing yet complementary states. Rather than relying on formal spectacle or iconic gestures, the project emphasizes spatial sequence, sensory immersion, and a measured relationship with time and terrain. At 877 square meters, the garden is intimate in scale but ambitious in its architectural sensibility.

The garden’s spatial organization follows a carefully choreographed procession. Entry into the site is not abrupt but gradual and absorptive. A filtered retreat from the exterior world first greets visitors. The architecture’s quiet concrete surfaces, etched with subtle wood grain, establish a tactile prelude to the following sensory journey.

Circulation unfolds as a narrative. A descending waterfall becomes the first focal point, its yellow rust stone surface textured and acoustically active. As one proceeds along the path, the experience deepens: an inner yard opens with water features and rock-block fields that draw the eye toward a centrally positioned sculpture. Rather than immediate visibility, this sculptural element is deliberately delayed in perception, revealing itself as the spatial axis only from specific vantage points.

The spatial rhythm continues through a curved red rammed earth wall, aged and weathered, introducing a sense of historical sediment. This transition culminates in a broader panorama, where the full extent of the garden becomes visible and invites a retrospective gaze upon the architecture itself. The garden path is not linear but migratory, allowing individuals to engage with space through varying velocities and pauses.

Window openings throughout the building function as viewfinders, framing curated landscape fragments. These apertures do not merely provide light or ventilation; they offer compositional encounters with the natural world. Each level of the villa transforms how the sea is seen, shifting from obscured glimpses to expansive horizontality. This vertical gradient in perception reinforces that space is not static but revealed through motion and time.

Material and Landscape Dialogue: Stone, Water, and Time

Material choices in L Villa Garden are central to its architectural language. Rather than foregrounding novelty, the project relies on materials that embody weathering, permanence, and tactility. The use of rammed earth, with its layered sediment and erosion marks, contrasts with the precision of board-formed concrete and the raw mass of monolithic stone blocks. Together, these materials construct a dialogue between nature and artifice.

Water is introduced not as a decorative element but as a temporal and auditory device. Its presence, from gentle cascades to reflective pools, contributes to the garden’s acoustic atmosphere. It mirrors the sky, modulates the temperature, and animates the stillness of stone surfaces. At moments, it disappears behind walls or reappears subtly at stone outlets, creating an experience of anticipation and concealment.

The “stone sea” becomes a compositional ground plane against which other garden elements unfold. Large stones are not ornamental but foundational. Their visual weight anchors the garden while their placement creates pause and rhythm. In this context, the landscape is less about planting and more about terrain: sculpted, layered, and composed through architectural thinking.

Conceptual Reflections: Landscape as an Extension of the Mind

The design’s philosophical underpinning draws upon classical Chinese landscape theory. A passage from Guo Xi’s Lin Quan Gao Zhi informs the project’s water and spatial perception approach. As the treatise suggests, the poetic power of water lies not in making its course visible but in veiling and disrupting it. This principle manifests in the garden’s refusal to disclose itself fully at once. Instead, it privileges layered encounters, indirect views, and slow revelations.

This conceptual attitude extends to the architectural spaces themselves. The first floor mediates between enclosure and openness, positioning its windows to blend immediate material textures with distant sea and sky. The second floor becomes more introspective, integrating the master bedroom and bathing areas with curated outdoor views. The final level, at the apex of the building, dissolves boundaries entirely. A panoramic viewing platform merges indoor function with infinite outward vision, allowing the architecture to disappear into its surroundings.

L Villa Garden Image Gallery

About July&Partners

July&Partners is a landscape design studio founded in July 2014 by Kang Heng, with offices in Shanghai and Hangzhou. Specializing in garden, sculpture, and spatial design, the studio blends traditional Japanese landscaping principles with contemporary Chinese contexts. As the exclusive China representative of Japanese masters Shunmyo Masuno and Uetoh Zoen, July&Partners is deeply committed to craftsmanship, especially stonework, and is engaged in all project phases. Guided by the belief that drawings mark the beginning rather than the end of design, their work seeks to reveal the living spirit of nature through material sensitivity and experiential engagement.

Credits and Additional Notes

1. Design Team: Kang Heng, Sun Wei, Su Yang, Ye Zhao