Longyou Tourist Center by atelier tao+c: Harmonizing Rural Heritage and Contemporary Design

The Longyou Tourist Center by atelier tao+c is a subtle yet transformative intervention in Tingtangxu Village, nestled along the Qu River in Quzhou, China. This visitor center seamlessly integrates cultural preservation, rural architecture, and modern minimalism, creating a space that serves both locals and tourists while respecting the village’s heritage.

Context and Site

Crossing the bridge over the Qu River leads visitors to the village, where homes feature vernacular layouts with irregular front yards shaped by generations of community negotiation. These irregular plots reflect the social structure and shared history of the village. At the village entrance stands a traditional late Qing dynasty house, with a courtyard and a kitchen annex added in the 1990s. This historic setting became the anchor for the Hushiguang Art Eco Site, a rural art festival that integrates scattered artworks with the natural landscape, subtly reshaping local life.

Design Concept

atelier tao+c designed a light-footprint shed at the village entrance to serve dual purposes: as a tourist rest stop and a meeting point for villagers, fostering casual social interactions. The structure encourages community engagement while respecting the existing village rhythm.

The architects developed a single-column passage along the courtyard's perimeter, aligning with the riverside road, village paths, and neighboring walls. The passage creates a rectangular courtyard at a slight 5° angle to the main house, serving as a threshold between the public road and private residence, filtering noise and letting in the gentle river breeze.

Architectural Features

The eaves of the structure are designed at three varying heights to respond to functional needs and the surrounding context:

• Near the village road, the passage cuts diagonally through the original kitchen annex, forming a café window.
• Facing the neighbor's boundary wall, the eave lowers subtly, embracing the presence of a tree without obstructing the old house façade.
• Along the main house, the eaves maintain distance to preserve the historic façade, blending the new structure with the old.

Inside the antique house, wooden wall panels and floor slabs were carefully removed to reveal the original structure. A galvanized steel framework threads lightly through the old rafters, supporting a cohesive internal program including display areas, seating, and lighting. The black epoxy resin flooring accentuates new interventions while preserving the original timber and weathered surfaces, reflecting atelier tao+c’s philosophy of “use but not occupy, insert but not renovate”.

Materiality and Sustainability

Materials for the passages and interior insertions are intentionally simple and locally sourced, including galvanized steel tubes and stainless steel corrugated plates. This choice echoes vernacular construction methods, allowing the interventions to harmonize with the rural environment. The design is temporary, reversible, and sensitive, leaving room for future transformations without erasing the village’s history.

The Longyou Tourist Center demonstrates a careful balance of cultural preservation, rural engagement, and modern design. It’s a place where tourists meet locals, history meets contemporary architecture, and minimal intervention creates maximum social and aesthetic impact.

All photographs are works of Wen Studio