Location: Chongming, Shanghai, China.

Architect: RooMoo.

SOM LAND, located on Shanghai’s Chongming Island, is a resort space created to be in harmony with the natural countryside and combines local customs and handicrafts. It focuses on nature and humanistic traditions, and the outdoor garden follows the natural environment’s “low maintenance” and “letting plants grow naturally” style. The two old houses on-site are renovated into a three-floor accommodation building, and the original tool hose is transformed into the reception building. Space renovation projects often require more careful consideration. The renovation of the two old buildings was designed to adjust the old and inappropriate space layout and add new design strategies to meet the new requirements.

The 552 square meters of space in the accommodation building mainly provides resort room functions, while the height of each floor was optimized and the actual 2-floor structure was changed to 3 floors. The staircase was relocated to the middle of the north side of the building to optimize the moving line and support the best visual view for resort guests. The original tool house was expanded from 70 square to 100 square meters in the western and northern directions, and the new function became a kitchen, muti-functional activity area (dining, baking, music show, etc.), reception, and two restrooms. The resort owner’s core idea is to provide guests with a warm and relaxing vacation with a deeper understanding of the local style of the environment. To achieve this, recycled bricks, demolished wood, natural clay paint, tree branches on the site, and old cloth with local characteristics of Chongming Island are used as construction materials for indoor and outdoor spaces and walls.

The concave-convex texture of the facade of the building is composed of recycled bricks according to the surface pattern of Chongming old cloth. Reed poles are used as roofs to shelter from wind and rain and to bring out the sustainable concept and practice of earth materials returning to nature.

Photos:Wen Studio