Perched high in Beijing‘s western mountains, where views stretch to Fragrant Hills Park and Yuquan Mountain, House J by Atelier About Architecture emerges not as a mere dwelling, but as a profound meditation on light, family, and the layered essence of home. Designed for a family long scattered across the globe yet yearning for rooted connection, this 650-square-meter private residencetransforms the constraints of an outdated structure into a luminous, multi-generational sanctuary defined by its overlaid gardens.
The project began with a house burdened by its past: an oppressive central hall, light-blocking additions, and deep shadows. A decade of family evolution – children grown, lives lived internationally, yet a deepening pull towards togetherness – demanded a radical reimagining. The owners’ dream was specific: spaces bathed in natural light, offering both comforting enclosure and independence, embodying the romantic ideal of “dwelling among mountains with just a slice of garden.”
Atelier About Architecture, led by Principal Architect Wang Ni, responded with a masterful strategy leveraging the site’s subtle topography. A 1.5-meter north-south slope and a gentler eastern descent became the foundation for creating differentiated spaces. The existing structure was radically reshaped: the problematic balcony and sunroom stripped away, floor heights reset, and volumes expanded and contracted to achieve a cohesive scale.
The architectural heart is a breathtaking intervention: a cantilevered living room box, seemingly suspended at the building’s core. Sunlight, captured via skylights in a double-height entrance, cascades through a low transitional space to reach this central living area, enclosed by inward-facing planting. Below it, concrete structural beams were raised ingeniously, carving out a vast, column-free indoor garden bathed in the same natural light. As the surrounding landscaping matures, this floating volume will nestle within embracing tree canopies, creating a powerful dialogue between interior and exterior gardens.
This spatial reconfiguration orchestrates light and views with precision. The double-height atrium on the second level forms a corridor to three bedrooms, each reached by a unique path winding around the floating living room. Movement through the house becomes a journey of discovery, with framed vistas cutting through layers of interior and exterior greenery, revealing the “garden within a garden.”
Functionality seamlessly intertwines with poetry. An open kitchen faces both the living room and gardens, allowing the culinary-inclined matriarch to engage visually with others reading or relaxing nearby. The dining space extends materially and visually into the preserved original garden. Crucially, the east garden serves as an independent guest entrance, leading visitors through a mountain-embraced courtyard directly into the home’s overlapping realms.
House J transcends mere residential architecture. It is a multidimensional landscape experience where sunlight traces human pathways through indoor, outdoor, and semi-outdoor zones. Every corner, shaped by its specific condition of light and outlook, offers unique spatial information. It manifests Atelier About Architecture‘s core concept: the creation of physical and spiritual gardens layered upon one another. These gardens overlap the interior with the exterior, the tangible with the imagined. Ultimately, they offer not an escape outwards, but a profound pathway inwards – a sanctuary for memory, spirit, and soul, solidly anchored on a Beijing mountainside.