Foraging for the Mushroom House

When talking about finding mushrooms in a wooded forest, slippery jacks and wood ears are what springs to mind for most people… Not a remarkable house!

But if you went foraging in the forests near Xin Yu City in the Jiangxi Province, China – that’s exactly what you will come across. In a daring new project from ZJJZ Architecture Practice, the Mushroom House is a two-storey circular shaped home nestled in a pine forest.

GALLERY  

The architects believe that the shape of the design and its location was a way to “handle the relationship between nature and the architecture”.

The main part of the mushroom is the guest room space, with a panoramic window set up near the viewing height. When sitting on chairs or leaning on the bed, the guests are immersed in the surrounding nature. The loft serves as a child area, linked by the small-scale stairs. The pure white cone-shaped roof is rounded on top, creating a sense of unbounded extension to the space.

The bathroom and storage space are arranged in a simple rectangular volume, which is inserted into the main body of the Mushroom. A horizontal window is designed next to the bathtub, avoiding the view from pedestrian path to ensure privacy, while bringing nature into the space. Meanwhile, the circular skylight at the top introduces different expressions of light and shadows with the change of time and weather. This poetic space also serves as the entrance lobby of the house, where the guests often visit and linger.

The Mushroom house adopts a lifted steel structure to minimize the impact of construction on the site. As time goes by, green plants on the ground will gradually spread to embrace the building. The cone-shape roof is cladded with pine woods, while the rest of the house is coated with granolithic concrete. The material changes in colour with humidity and time, allowing the building to harmonize with the surrounding natural environment.

Images by Fangfang Tian

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