LUZHOU SHUNCHENGHE MANOR

The project is part of a distillery manor of Chinese Baijiu Luzhou Laojiao, located in a Mountain with beautiful landscape views. The landscape design needs to restore and stabilize the slopes on-site, which have been compromised during building construction on the hilltop, and to introduce an access route on a 20° steep hill from the bottom. 

Our design creates a buried zig-zag walkway that leads people to the hilltop building. It was created by retaining walls on both sides as the slopes' structural reinforcement. As people walk along the trail, they experience the most beautiful and unique mountain views from different perspectives.

The design used low-tech construction methods and basic material to achieve the design outcome in a limited budget. We designed the retaining wall using bricks and concrete mix, with a thick layer of red spray paint to match the red color of the soil. Based on old Chinese saying that "Red crops come from red soils.", the red color soil is due to its minerals and organic matter contents, which are very crucial to the baijiu's raw material- Red Sorghum's growth. The walkway is paved by concrete slabs laid on top of the porous gravel layer. 

Another layer of a zig-zag channel was overlaid with the walkway, which is planted with the grassy-leaved sweet flag to collect and infiltrate stormwater. The rainwater flows through the channel and ends up in the bottom retention pond. Along with the water from the surface runoff, rooftop collection, they will all be stored in the underground retention tank beneath the water feature. The system performs very well after years of use, and now it can save 200 tons of rainwater for irrigation, bathroom water use, and landscape paving cleaning. 

The design has become quite a success that it creates the most stunning expression of Luzhou Laojiao's cultural image using limited resources. The landscape becomes an eternal phenomenon blending with the red soil on the hill.