Wutopia Lab was commissioned by Shanghai Huijian to design a steel garden named White Upland in Huzhou. This 3,300-square-meter Midsummer Night’s Dream Garden serves as the sales front area for the company’s real estate sales center. It marks Wutopia Lab’s first integration of architecture, landscape, interior, lighting, and installation art to create a magical realism environment.
Daydream
Where Is My Home
Home is a fortress shielding you from the harsh gaze of the world when life feels unfair.
The client requested a renovation of the sales center facade and the front yard landscape, seeking a unique marketing showcase to express their refined product concept. Though they had no specific references, they emphasized avoiding any common landscape designs. The space was meant to subtly represent their aspiration for a better life.
At the time I accepted the project, I was recovering from personal turmoil. Life is full of setbacks that we cannot simply forget or erase. These challenges can tear us apart, strike us hard, and suffocate us. Through this storm, I realized how vital the concept of home is to me.
I aimed to create a place where one could momentarily detach from reality, forget pain and anxiety, and embrace a dream filled with beautiful memories and hope for the future—a timeless refuge. As Wittgenstein said, “Only when one lives not in time, but in the present, can one be happy.” This is a space for a joyful daydream.
Dematerialized Memory
Through memories, you return to a place better than your current world.
The dream I envisioned is pure and connected to cherished, yet vague memories. It is linked to reality but does not represent concrete reality itself. After all, “memory is an act of recreation, easily distorted and fabricated.” Unpleasant pasts become topics of laughter, and “the future is just hope for the present, while the past is memories of the present.”
This place should evoke joy and relaxation, detached from material narratives—an expression of lightness that can bear the weight of the world. It should be white. Hence, White Upland.
We Still Have Dreams
Life in adulthood holds no easy words.
Life may be unsatisfactory, but dreams should remain sweet. They stand unafraid of reality’s scrutiny, honestly embedded within it, and have the power to influence the world’s expression. This dream has boundaries but remains perceptible.
To define this, I used 529 steel columns, each six meters tall, to create the semi-transparent boundary of White Upland. Visually, it clearly marks the line between two worlds. Whether inside or outside, the other world appears faintly, like a doppelgänger within or beyond the dream. This magical realism garden forms the facade that dissolves the original sales center, offering a new place to rediscover physical identity and time. White Upland is a tangible dream.
Around the Dream
The essence of desire remains constant, but its forms are ever-changing. Even if you grasp one form for long, it will eventually be replaced. Desire is ultimately fickle.
Crossing the Forest: Place
I walked out from the forest’s depths,
Light filtering between tree trunks.
I created a forest of 108 giant steel clovers, featuring caves, hills, streams, springs, theaters, boulders, and wastelands. In my dream, nature takes on refined geometric white shapes. Within dappled light, we encounter dawn, fog, and bonfires.
Metamorphosis: The Body
Dreams reveal reality, while imagination hides behind it.
In White Upland, we can experience a wonder like Alice shrinking. The fragile clover grows into towering trees. We can spot childhood toys, swings, and carousels. The real world feels like a giant steel-concrete-glass monster, blocking our senses of nature. But here, we rediscover bird songs, fragrances in the mist, and a strengthened connection to our bodies. We sing loudly in the forest theater, surrounded by white hills.
The Mystery of Arrival: Identity
The world we find is partly created by ourselves. We anticipate both bitter and sweet ends, with no turning back.
In pursuit of comfort and refinement, we often forget where we come from. At White Upland’s entrance, I created an ink wash garden surrounded by 16 red maple trees. Fifty tons of black mountain stones resemble ink marks left in a white dream, hinting at Jiangnan. Before entering the forest that suggests the future, a dimly lit black cave resembling an eye invites us to pause, to calm ourselves, and to reflect on whether we are ready in the eyes of the transcendent.
Shining Light
Through our eyes, we realize that no matter how uncertain life is, in this moment, we stand firm and happy. This instant holds hope. We see with both our eyes and hearts.
The Book of Gilead: Time
Sometimes I feel like a child, opening my eyes once to see the world’s indescribable wonders, only to close them again.
White Upland’s maze-like design offers a slowed perception of time—a day in the mountains, a year in the world. In today’s world of precise timers, people feel urgent and anxious about inevitable ends. Here, lingering in small, shifting dreams reveals the significance of slowing time.
White Upland also embodies a deeper view of time: to appreciate the beauty of the present moment warmly and to embrace life’s cycles with curiosity. Though reincarnation is a concept many no longer believe in, its world offers a new perspective on life, removing fear of final endings. This philosophy shapes a vital life experience for the Chinese people: vitality.
The Song of Ice and Fire: Technology
Flight always begins with a fall.
Technology alone can create a virtual world parallel and independent from reality. This dream was carefully and precisely built with 106 tons of steel, assembled through factory prefabrication into White Upland’s 3,300 square meters.
The forest’s open space hides 117 nozzles that can instantly unleash a spring of joy. Visitors can play and dance in the fountain, shedding all reservations. Beyond the fountain, a robot transforms 5,954 meters of fluorescent carbon fiber into a red cone gently placed on a white hill. This solid flame is an inviting bonfire, a safe and warm beacon within the white forest.
The House of the Day, the House of the Night: Language
To understand the world, you don’t need to leave home.
White Upland is readable, with symbols embedded into the ground representing different scenes. These abstract patterns are a unique script crafted for this steel garden, allowing visitors to interpret the language of dreams more deeply.
Dreams suggest that we often imagine the lives shown in magazines as our own, yet our homes and communities become dominated by these images. Recognizing we do not truly belong, we accumulate possessions and clutter as resistance, leading to a weary life.
White Upland does not demand a particular lifestyle but offers the possibility for dreams to mediate one’s own life creation. Everyone can enter their own life through their dreams. Thus, White Upland transcends landscape—it integrates architecture, interior design, landscape, lighting, and installation art.
When the continuous lampposts along White Upland’s boundary light up at night, anyone can feel the profound symbolism beyond mere architecture.
Dream Within the Dream
The only true heroism is to love life even after knowing its truth.
Sometimes, dreaming feels like being awake, and waking feels like dreaming. The boundaries blur, and I wonder which experiences have truly happened. Perhaps this world itself is a dream. One morning, I feel as if I am awakening in a world that doesn’t exist.
White Upland was completed in summer—it was my fragile, middle-aged Midsummer Night’s Dream. When it was finished, I was still recovering from my second personal storm. This experience gave new meaning to my design. From the air, White Upland’s outline forms an infinite symbol. Dreams can be infinite, and so can hope.
We must recognize that some things, like White Upland, exist temporarily—perhaps solely to bring joy or to witness an idea become reality. Spending time creating buildings and places with little practical use still holds value. Transient, fleeting, and self-contradictory, White Upland carries a more eternal meaning. It is not just a dream, but a sacred space to live a better life.
White Upland is a tangible dawn. In a fleeting moment, it is a distant, vague stranger—yet it is in that moment that you fall in love with this stranger.
△ Node Diagram
△ General Layout Plan
△ Axis Dynamic Diagram
Project Information:
Project Name: White Upland (Future Peak Front Field)
Project Location: Intersection of Dongpo Road and Second Ring South Road, Wuxing District, Huzhou, China
Client: Shanghai Huijian Investment Co., Ltd
Construction Area: 3,296 square meters
Materials: Steel, concrete slab, aluminum plate, carbon fiber, black stone, acrylic, washed stone, adhesive stone, terrazzo
Construction Period: September 2019 to August 2020
Design Firm: Wutopia Lab
Lead Architect: Yu Ting
Project Architects: Dai Xinyang, Li Zongze
Design Team: Wang Dong, Wu Zhen, Xu Nan
Construction Drawing Design: Shanghai Julong Greening Development Co., Ltd
(Peng Feng, Feng Jimin, Li Peiyong, Bao Xuerui, Mao Xingfu, Yang Di, Xie Beirong, Cui Huamin, Dong Xingyu)
Bonfire Design: Shanghai Dajie Robot Technology Co., Ltd
(Meng Hao, Lai Guanting, Lu Yanchen, Lin Zhewei, Ha Yuhong, Chen Yu, Shi Yiping, Shen Bao, Wang Zhenjia)
Lighting Consultant: Zhang Chenlu
Guidance System Design: Peanut Design Alliance Wutopia Lab
Client Architects: Wu Gang, Wang Ruizhe
Photography: CreatAR Images
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