House Under the Boat
Beijing, China
House Under the Boat is a home and private library in Lishui, in Beijing's Shunyi District, reworked and extended by Chaoffice for a professor who needed room for more than 20,000 books. The practice worked out that this meant about 400 metres of shelving, so part of the old house came down and a single double-height library, 7 by 14 metres with shelves rising to 6 metres, went in at the centre of the site; its roof is inverted and hung from steel so the truss joints open as skylights, and the gallery above has a glass floor to pass the light down. The work was designed in 2021 and finished in 2022, 480 square metres in all.
This room is not the library but the ring around the north courtyard: that side of the site was dug down a metre to keep the neighbours' outlook while the trees stayed at their old level, and the 750 millimetre step that left became one continuous tabletop, kitchen bench on the left and desk on the right. In the practice's words: "Following this elevation difference, a continuous circular tabletop forms, and the courtyard appears to become part of this tabletop. In summer, as the plants grow, it looks like an oversized floral arrangement." The joinery throughout the house is laminated plywood, the floor is polished concrete run out into the courtyard, and the steel is painted white.
Chaoffice
Chaoffice is a Beijing practice founded by Cheng Zhi in 2016; he led this project with Wu Di and Pan Juhao.
Architecture Chaoffice (@chaoffice). Photography Zhu Yumeng (@yumeng_zhu_coppakstudio). Seen via @architecturelab.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched September 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.