MAPLE HE

A primary focus of our plan centreing on the community’s and proposed space’s
relationship to land, our design leverages landscape as a prominent piece of the proposal,
carefully responding to seasonal climate conditions and precipitation extremes. Fitting our project to the site context and conditions, Three-moon Pavilion prioritizes the flexibility and security necessitated by the project’s programming, consisting of 2 separated structures, maintaining visibility and awareness of goings-on from throughout the site, while allowing simultaneous intensive programming to occur independently from the other. Embracing clay bricks allows the undulation of Three-moon Pavilion walls, corresponding to envisaged
programming within the space and ensuring visibility and interactivity through the site, while
encouraging necessary ventilation. Working to engage the site’s entirety as pleasurable and
useful space, we chose to carefully afforest the site using significant indigenous species,
including baobab, jujube, acacia, rosewood, and bamboo, cooling the site during the arid
months and helping absorb rainwater through monsoon season, abating local soil erosion
and desertification. Playing with the same factors, a number of stepped and graded pools
are embedded within the landscape, sized to act flexibly as arrangements for gathering and
discussion, rest and play, as they collect and perspire precipitation. Security was prioritized
through the project, with visibility maintained through the site.

Building atop raised clay pedestals, Three-moon Pavilion uses clay bricks for undulating walls that organize the house and ensure visibility throughout. The thatch roof is held up by a small number of larger wod columns that meet the ground plane, as well as smaller columns of local trunk that intersect with and pierce the brick wall, the bricks at these points cast to  accommodate the column. The thatch roof is framed from the columns using bamboo vulgaris, and crossed with wild bamboo that together support the densely layered straw thatch. The ponds and site grading employ loose shells for their decorative and draining properties.