Richaus

English description provided by the architects.

Nested within the layered folds of this mountain city, RICHAUS inserts itself as a contemporary geometric volume engaged in a dialogue with nature, embedded into the vast, complex terrain of Southwest China.

PART 01. AN INTERFACE 

We cloaked the building in a pioneering metal curtain—a bounded veil that opens a dialogue with its surroundings. At the entrance, a sliding metal door alternates between transparency and solidity, allowing nature to permeate the threshold.

Dense silent gravel, flowing water features, and lush landscaping are woven into a mountain interface. The warm, humid climate of the Southwest naturally seeps into the building's fabric, creating a "limite perceptive"—a perceptual boundary that asserts a contemporary presence within the existing industrial campus.

As exhibitions, forums, live events, and other public programs continue to unfold, RICHAUS has gradually become a generative site for cultural and social life in the mountain city.

PART 02. A RELATIONSHIP 

Inside, we deliberately preserved a sense of "unfinishedness," openly exposing the raw textures of beams and columns, the exposed routing of pipes and conduits.

Using a light, natural mode of construction, we orchestrated the traces of growth and the logic of making—keeping everything in a gentle state of flux and redefinition. Through honest revelation, what returns is the closeness and freedom of being welcomed.

Our interpretation of "local character" begins from the perspectives of geography, culture, and public life, seeking an appropriate way to respond to local memory and warmth. Stairs are the connective tissue linking Chongqing's upper and lower urban layers.

Through playful expansions, turns, and landings, multiple cross level interactive platforms emerged. Thus, the stairway, originally serving a singular circulatory function, transforms from mere functionality toward an experiential and communal public dimension.

The three level stair installation, "Climbing Stair Party," threads together a multi layer social ecosystem: including the new Organhaus space on the 2nd floor, offices and flexible exhibition areas on the 3rd and 4th floors, and the Southwest style aa market on the 5th floor.

The long staircase acts as a familiar, trusted emotional ligament. In those lively moments of "dropping by," we cease to be strangers on another level, rediscovering the neighborly kinship of the past.

Hence, we orchestrated playful turns and detours—starting from enhancing visual appeal and commercial display effectiveness, then moving toward deeper possibilities of interaction between people and space, and among people themselves.

At the same time, we transformed overlooked details—light fixtures, fire hydrants, railings, stair handrails—from passive elements into active components, integrating them into the space as deliberate installations.

RICHAUS grows from the city's plural relationships and needs. It offers an opportunity to forge and renew human connections, allowing us to speak again—here—of collaboration, creation, and sharing.

Thus, we allowed this unequivocally concrete materiality to express the vessel's resolute stance. Different textures collide: raw, rough, smooth, unrefined—setting the space apart from the highly flattened, uniform office tower.

Wood carries the warmth of the Southwest's local fabric. We wrapped parts of the structure in reclaimed elm boards—here, the expression of "traces" itself becomes an Eastern lyricism.

We aimed to integrate the lighting and display systems as essential components of the public realm. Silver expanded metal mesh hangs from above—cool, precise. Galvanized silver light fixtures are arranged in sequence; galvanized steel tubes and exposed conduits combine to form a distinctly contemporary apparatus.

Perhaps because it is rooted in the Southwest, RICHAUS inherits the inherent tolerance and abundance of this land—where natural roughness coexists with refined order, shaping a unique vessel for urban life.