China, a country where farmers accounted for 97 percent of its total population one hundred years ago, has been run by farmers for four thousand years. Chinese folk wisdom about construction is, more often than not, hidden in some seemingly ?heretical? ancient books including Guanzi. Diyuan Chapter, The Book of Burial, The Book on Agriculture and Exploitation of the Works of Nature. The history of traditional rural settlements in China demonstrates how Chinese agricultural techniques have evolved. These traditional rural construction works, led by small-scale peasant economies, are multi-field and trans-scale projects that have admirably inte-grated geography, irrigation works and agriculture. This type of production-promoting compound construc-tion has captured our attention and we have dubbed it ?agri-tectonic?
minimal intervention. Image © Jiang Wang

Architects: VRAP

Location: Nantou Village, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Lead Architects: Minjie Si, Lei Yang, Jiang Wang

Design Team: Weixiong Jiang, Jingyi Du, Yunlu Hong, Huan Zhang, Jun Ma, Xinfei Guo, Chi Ma

Area: 400.0 m2

Project Year: 2018

Photographs: Jiang Wang, Minjie Si, Lei Yang, Peng Deng

Collaborators: Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, xfarm

Construction Supervisor: Fan Zhou

Volunteers: Department of Architecture of Shenzhen University: Zaohuan Xu, Chang Xu, Li Han, Shuai Ge, Dongmin ...