According to the Analects of Confucius, men of moral character find themselves at home in being moral. That’s the spirit behind Anren, which means being moral in Chinese, the town where our project is located at. A rectangular table, four bamboo armchairs, a cup of cover bowl tea, a long-mouthed tea pot, and a few people sitting around, etc, are a unique way of relaxing and socializing in Anren once and for now. When walking in dusk in a local block, you step on rectangular pavers and blue tiles made from a few centuries ago, and the pale moon shines above you. With such mansion culture continuing over time,the life here is simple and satisfying, and people feel peaceful and happy.
In this project, we received a consultation request to highlight a new community courtyard landscape using water features. With an attempt to keep the local tradition and culture, we designed a pool with ripples.
Ripples are a gift from the nature. As raindrops falling into still water, it breaks peace and triggers countless ripples, which looks like a dynamic natural landscape painting. They ripple away briefly, faintly and delicately, then everything returns to peace.The process cycles and lasts endlessly, which thoroughly relaxes people’s mind. Therefore we would like to apply this design inspiration to express a gentle and graceful state of mind stemmed from ripples, and we started from the following aspects.
Firstly, we laid out ripples in the pool. Natural ripples are randomly distributed in space-time dimension, and so is the rule we followed. We selected a couple ripple generators of different sizes, placed them out randomly but kept density controlled. This is to simulate natural ripple combinations.
Next, we’ve overcome a series of engineering and technological difficulties in order to make the best looking ripples:
The precise control over the water level. The water level requirement to generate a ripple is very strict and commonly within 5 mm. In this project, every one remained skeptical of that depth, but we eventually made it. We had a in-depth communication with the construction company and the fineness of the civil engineering technology played a decisive role in the beauty of the ripples.
Using black polished surface material for pool bottom paving. The color and surface treatment of the pool bottom directly determine whether the ripples are visible or not. The black polished surface of the stone pavement enhances water reflection and generates ripples with more obvious looking.
Setting overflow around the pool.Ripples need to be set in pools with overflow around them to prevent the ripples from bouncing back against the wall, which determines the beauty of the ripples. So in order to ensure a stable overflow effect, the weir at the overflow side needs to be absolutely level.
Limited selection of ripple generator manufacturers as well as working experience of construction company. We’ve overcome many difficulties through trials and errors.
All in all, in this highly industrialized society, we hope that by using water features, we can bring the beauty of nature, art and science as well as a unique comfort to heart.
Role of the entrant in the project : Waterscape Consultant (Design Plan, Construction Plan, Technology and Ripple Equipment Research, Water Feature Installation Guidance)
Other landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape : Chengdu AOBO Landscape Design Co, Ltd
Project location : 13 Qianxi Rd, Anren Town, Dayi County, Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, China
Design year: 2019
Year built: 2019
