A Living Garden and Exhibition Space in Hangzhou by Mountain Soil.

Mountain Soil has conceived a living garden and exhibition space for JIA Garden Craft, a home for art and hand-crafted objects in Hangzhou’s newly opened commercial centre. The interior is spread across two floors framed by windows. Natural light and the surrounding greenery act as supporting actors to the textural interior.

On the ground floor, the central display takes inspiration from the outside, adopting the basic shape of a leaf. Underneath, an asymmetrical rock garden of irregularly shaped limestones ground the table, forming a rugged landscape underfoot. The main entrance, dubbed by Mountain Soil as the ‘Pending Garden’, overlooks the panorama—a circular route around the central axis leading to the upper garden through a narrow staircase on the side.

Exposed structural concrete columns are retained, adding a rough grain to the neutral finishes. “The columns serve as the building skeletons that complete the spatial relationships in a raw and refined paralleling way,” Mountain Soil elaborates.

Upstairs consists of three spatial layers. The designers left existing cracks in the ground as a structural representation of the entire space. “The clear cracks in the ground and the appearance of non-artificially intervened natural life over time provided us with an answer on how to perceive both artificial construction and organic nature,” Mountain Soil continues. Uneven walls further divide the area into three sections; the ‘Meeting Garden’, ‘Wandering Garden’ and ‘Lingering Garden’.

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Connected with the first floor, the ‘Meeting Garden’ is defined by a cantilevered semi-circular arc that extends upwards. Juxtaposed with layered display and storage space, this space is designed to bridge the divide between architecture and structure.

The ‘Wandering Garden’, in the central section of the second floor, has display surfaces growing out of the cracks in the ground. On the ground, washed stone references garden pebbles, seamlessly bringing the outdoors inside. Designed for large art installations and events, the ‘Lingering Garden’ is a free and open space with an added bar counter, letting nature and craftsmanship take centre stage.

The interior captures the unorganised beauty of the natural world, showcasing the calm in chaos. “We looked to create a unique ‘living home’ for the project where space, handicraft objects, and human behaviour can have subtle connections. This place is an exhibition space, an equal and free spirit embedded art space for all people committed to discovering handicrafts,” Mountain Soil concludes.

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[Images courtesy of Mountain Soil. Photography by Wen Studio.]