Corner Garden / A Western Attempt for Oriental Gardens

Wenhan Li

My project‘s location is at the intersection of Pitt Street and West Regent Street, called Blythswood House. it is the GSA’s newest halls of residence site available to students.

After surveying the location, I found several points of interest. The first point of interest is the height difference brought about by the street’s slope. This height difference can be directly used in the design space. The second point of interest is a gap, which is a narrow platform for activities outside the building. Third, next to Blythswood House is Blythswood square. It is a park with a long history, but it is a private park, and visitors cannot enter. It is the only park in the blocks around. Looking at the platform outside the Blythswood House, the entire platform is not fully used, and secondly, for the sake of safety, the platform is equipped with a fence, but at the same time, it lacks imagination and blocks some movement routes.

So, under ideal conditions, I hope that this space can be fully used and rejuvenate public space’s charm. Secondly, greening this space and playing a garden’s role contrasts with Blythewood Square, which is forbidden to enter. Third, planning the route so that this gap space becomes a part of the entire block and House. Fourth, because the area is relatively small, it is necessary to use the height difference and increase the space’s complexity to make the gap more interesting.

In this case, if I want to make a small space big, it is not about emptying the space or extend the extra space, but increasing the story and complexity of the space.

So I want to use “garden” as a technique, a way that the ancients used to deal with such situations. Is it possible to abstract a combination of specific spaces from more traditional landscape paintings and apply them to my project site? This has become a question I want to explore and research.

I designed a big story that contains seven small stories about my site. The big story is about climbing a mountain. Regarding the actual height difference, I set up the small stories in different stages at different height differences. I infer the characteristics and forms of different spaces from landscape paintings with different themes. Subsequently, I combined these characteristics and forms with my site to design different simulacrums. Finally, the actual physical space is designed from these simulacrums. In addition, I also designed the masonry and green plants in the key part of the project.

It’s worth mentioning that I did not use a conventional method to make the renderings but a landscape painting method. Although the picture’s perspective may not be scientific and space is also distorted, I hope that the audience can see some stories from the picture.

Email: l1wenhan@163.com