Chongqing Cloud City Apartment is located in the new town area of Chongqing City, China. It is a residential project consisting of four apartment buildings and surrounding commercial streets. The complex is situated adjacent to the university town in the west and is mostly occupied by millennials. The architecture is dense, complex, and simple, yet exquisite. The design team aimed to make the most of the prominent location and urban context by creating a seasonal courtyard that would provide a fashionable, imaginative, and comfortable living space for the new generation.
Commercial street with urban fabric
The design team sought to create a contemporary landscape with a dynamic and varied expression through the commercial street, corridor, and courtyard. The commercial street serves as a shared space for Cloud City Apartment and provides space for traffic, pedestrians, and communal activities. It connects the residences to the seasonal courtyard and the wider urban fabric, creating a strong sense of pavement sequence.
Jungle corridor with variety of plants
A corridor connects the entrance and the outside community space, designed to create a lush experience for residents to enjoy the sights, smells, and shadows when they return home.
Careful consideration was given to the composition, materials, and plants used in this jungle corridor. The landscape is framed by diverse and dynamic plantings, including a mixture of wild and garden plants. Jacaranda trees, which reach up to 8 meters in height and have crowns of 5 meters, provide a beautiful frame for the corridor. Low shrubs such as fenugreek, spray snowflake, blue snowflake, dark blue sage, and ferns, among others, create a unique aroma that has a healing effect.
The urban drainage system is sustainable and utilizes rainwater as a visible and recreational element. The minimum upkeep areas allow plants to grow wild, and new species can appear naturally, creating a rich variety of flora and fauna.
At the heart of the community lies the seasonal courtyard, a square living room of sorts. Unlike most residential developments, we took a reverse design approach by leaving the space open and blank with an open scape like lawn. This allows the courtyard to be multi-functional, serving as a vital connection between all the residential buildings. We designed the traffic pattern to facilitate movement throughout the space.
In the center of the courtyard stands a hub, which we constructed using a quasi-architectural method. The hub features a temperature adjustment system and seating arranged around a stove, making it the perfect place for people to experience the changing scenery throughout the four seasons. We planted maple trees for their impressive color-changing qualities, and we incorporated sculptures like Cheese to make the space more fashionable and attractive. Since its completion, the seasonal courtyard has become a popular gathering spot for young people, who frequently gather there during evenings and weekends to enjoy themselves.
Seasonal Courtyard – Chongqing Cloud City Apartment | Chongqing, China | Inlab Studio
Landscape Designer: Inlab Studio
Client: SUNAC Chongqing
Image Credits: Minhua Yu