Abstract
Guo Zhuang Villa is a famous residence-villa in Hangzhou City, southern China. It is well known for its unique artistic style and its meticulous construction. The villa has a history of over 100 years, initially serving as the residence of Duanfu Song in 1907 Qing dynasty. In the Minguo period (Republic of China), the villa was sold to Shilin Guo. Since that time, the villa has been called “Guo Zhuang”—meaning the villa of the Guo family. Guo Zhuang not only features the elements typical of southern Chinese gardens, with their elegant re-creations of nature, but also has its own unique character, cleverly blending the garden into nature and incorporating two artificial ponds near the West Lake in Hangzhou. This article is on the basis of reading much historical document and bookmaking, researching the formation, the background and the geography of Guo Zhuang Villa, and mainly carries research on its garden location, layout spatial processing, creating artistic mood, the choice and configuration of landscape plants and so on. These are useful references to modern landscape architecture design and construction.
Highlights
Guo Zhuang is one of the best-preserved and most beautiful private villas within traditional Chinese architecture
In the Minguo period (Republic of China), the villa was sold to Shilin Guo
This article is on the basis of reading much historical document and bookmaking, researching the formation, the background and the geography of Guo Zhuang Villa, and mainly carries research on its garden location, layout spatial processing, creating artistic mood, the choice and configuration of landscape plants and so on
Summary
Guo Zhuang is one of the best-preserved and most beautiful private villas within traditional Chinese architecture. Guo Zhuang (Figure 1) is a re-created nature in microcosm: it is an imitation of nature, and fully manifests the beauty of nature in limited space (Pan, 2015); it is an improvement on nature which should show the painstaking efforts of the garden builder in every corner. It has concentrated man-made structures like rockery (artificial hill), fish ponds and all manner of pavilions together with flowers, trees, breezes and moonlight of nature, and has combined all these into an artistic entity in which man and nature can co-exist harmoniously. Walking into Guo Zhuang garden, one cannot help but be enchanted by its unique oriental flavor; and walking in an atmosphere of tranquility and peace, one will discover something unlikely to be found in Western architecture—delicate and refined, complex and contained in its quietude (Lou, 2016)
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