Text description provided by the architects. Aranya Art Center Guangzhou and the Community Canteen mark Vector Architects’ third project built around preserving existing trees and the underlying microtopography following Liyuan Foreign Language Primary School (Jingtian Campus) in Shenzhen and Jingyang Camphor Court in Jingdezhen. Though these three projects sit on distinctly different sites, each new architectural intervention shares a common gesture of stepping back from the existing trees: sometimes lining up unilaterally to form corridors and boundary walls, other times branching outward to define courtyards. Within this coexistence of the old and the new, the site evolves through architectural intervention, while the trees become the tangible embodiment of the site’s spirit.
