“The true meaning of education is to shake a tree, move a cloud, and awaken another soul.”
— Karl Theodor Jaspers
In 2021, six designers were commissioned to renovate the Mama Farm, located in Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province—an earthquake-prone area. The farm supports 20 children from disadvantaged families who lack family care. Here, children learn through farm labor while the farm promotes dignified assistance for them. However, the existing simple and chaotic living conditions lack the warmth and sense of belonging that a true home provides.
The farm covers a complex environment: 500 square meters of public space, 800 square meters of dormitories, 1,300 square meters of fields, a 200 square meter outdoor functional area, and a 3-acre agricultural park. Commissioned by a university for public welfare, the “Dream Reformer” project invited six young designers to create a healing renovation inspired by the concepts of “home” and “life is education.”
Design Challenges
Scale: Balancing public and private spaces with equal spatial participation.
The design emphasizes autonomy and equal, open participation for users. By subtly expanding spaces without rigid boundaries, the original character of the site is transformed. Various scales are created—individual, partner, collective, and broader communal spaces—all connected through seamless transitions. This approach allows children to move freely between different environments without feeling confined.
Managing the balance between privacy and public spaces was a key focus. In the dormitory area, stacking and rolling shutters preserve personal space. The reception hall acts like a city post station, linking courtyards and creating a concealed package with the public area. The outer corridor’s sloping roof, composed of small pavilions interrupted by greenery, transforms the original rigid 40-meter one-story roof into a mosaic village-like structure. Above, vast clouds envelop the fields, framing the undulating mountains of Beichuan.
Metaphor: A Graceful Sea of Mountains and Rivers, Expressing Settled Emotions
The living space is expanded with eaves corridors and canopies using simple construction methods like steel structures combined with sun panels or membranes, enhancing both spatial scale and emotional depth. The eaves galleries resemble small houses or half pavilions, with sloping roofs symbolizing a sheltered home in the children’s hearts.
This series of independent yet connected eaves and corridors replaces the coldness of the original horizontal roofs and standard windows. They form undulating groups symbolizing a village where children hold hands. The cloud-shaped sheds embrace the buildings like a mother’s arms, dissolving separate volumes and evoking children’s playful spirit, bridging architecture and nature. Every blade of grass is respected and cared for, evoking memories of the first arrival in Beichuan with its rolling mountains and floating clouds.
A warm home sheltered by clouds relies on the power of narrative. Architect Xu Yunfang used grey spaces connected by cloud canopies and corridors to blur inner and outer boundaries. Zhang Jianwu, responsible for the public area, preserved collective memory by carefully shaping the public port’s scale, fostering ongoing dialogue between old and new buildings.
Zhang Yaotian addressed emotional needs with gentle cavities offering spiritual shelter. Xu Mingxuan created a multifunctional “cloud sea” space for living, sleeping, and playing. The Game High Hand Tour introduces children to diverse experiences through multifunctional chessboard gardens. Li Cong emphasized ecology and environmental protection, filling gaps between vegetation with thoughtful design.
Public Space Scale and Memory
Balancing public access scale while preserving collective memory was a key exploration point. The design awakens children’s awareness of their environment to foster autonomy through spatial redefinition. Dynamic spatial arrangements inject vitality and create an organic dialogue between old and new.
Adjustments to non-solid spaces improve circulation, with the front area opening interfaces that bring outdoor elements inside, seamlessly connecting public spaces.
Continuing the seamless indoor-outdoor flow, the atrium at the activity room entrance features a sun panel echoing the building exterior, creating an ambiguous boundary. The surrounding spatial units are unified along the atrium axis, with reinforced structural supports freeing the floor space for users.
Dynamic Lifting Device
The elliptical sunken area features stacked soft bags, creating a cozy “little nest” for children. Behind a wall, a TV is concealed with a dynamic lifting mechanism, combining technology and art to offer a versatile display space.
The original single reading area has been transformed into a multifunctional space offering reading, storage, and event hosting. The stepped reading landscape maintains visual connections with public spaces, inviting children to explore learning opportunities in their own way.
Elevating Projectors and Modular Furniture
Besides reading, the area also hosts daily cultural exchanges. The R&D team designed easy-to-assemble and storable tables and chairs to suit various activities. A hidden lifting projector satisfies children’s desire to watch movies while saving space.
Cartoon Farm Map
The architecture serves as both the starting point of dreams and a window for children returning home. The high team office is the first stop for every child arriving at the Mama Farm and acts as the initial “window” into their new world. High-quality materials create an intimate dialogue with the environment. A specially drawn farm map clearly outlines the space, while an open cabinet photo wall preserves children’s memories.
Warm textured paint seamlessly embraces the venue’s memories, while soft materials provide safety and intimacy. Dim lighting adds a gentle ambiance to the “Cloud Dream Whispering” counseling room, soothing children’s anxieties and inner thoughts.
Modular Dining Tables
To accommodate residents’ dining schedules, the process from kitchen to dining area was optimized for better flow. Folding and unfolding tables and chairs adapt to various scenarios like daily meals, events, and handicraft sessions.
Cloud Sea: A Space to Live, Visit, and Enjoy
Function and emotion translate into design, creating a cloud sea leisure space for living, sleeping, and playing. The project preserves local Qiang ethnic architectural elements, balancing the dynamic interplay between people, nature, and architecture, sparking reflection on human living.
The interior connects seamlessly to the broader environment, with each space offering a boundary for personal solitude. The exterior acts as a living room for the home, welcoming visitors with a calm presence that balances privacy and community.
The undulating eaves break the monotony of the sloped roof while trees interrupt its continuity with a random, natural rhythm. Due to mismatches between tree positions and windows, and spatial constraints in the 2-meter corridor, the design preserved this conflict by allowing trees to “smoothly” penetrate the eaves corridor’s roof. A dimming light strip behind the sun panel creates alternating light and shadow, softening the visual interruption and complementing the male dormitory.
Due to the brick structure of the dormitory building, challenges such as water leakage and poor insulation existed, and partition walls could not be moved or altered. After multiple applications of polyurethane and thorough sealing tests, the designers created two male dormitories (housing four and two occupants) and one female dormitory (four occupants).
The male dormitory, named “Sea,” symbolizes openness and foresight. The design incorporates bed structures with ample storage, giving each child a private space. Two bed configurations—T-shaped and staggered parallel—accommodate spatial differences and enhance comfort.
Raw grey surfaces and contrasting light and heavy color treatments create a dynamic tension in the “cloud”-themed dormitory. The beam structure, characteristic of the local Qiang ethnic architecture, is preserved with a suspended beam atop the interior. This not only connects children’s memories but also allows for retractable curtains to create private spaces.
Self-Made Living Wall
During reinforcement, bay windows were expanded to increase natural light, with blinds and glass layers controlling indoor lighting and views. A “quality living wall” was installed, divided into four zones—daily hygiene, sports equipment, interest memory, and learning storage—offering children organized, tidy, and accessible storage.
A courtyard between the dormitory and reception room enhances views and encourages outdoor play. A tent creates a dreamy imaginative space, with warm lighting setting a cozy atmosphere for the architectural “living room.”
He Realm: A Gentle Chamber
The cave, humanity’s original refuge, inspires the gently curved architectural spaces here. After breaking free from rigid geometric forms, the design offers a rough yet comforting environment that temporarily distances individuals from trauma, catering to the need for spiritual shelter in a unique “otherworld.”
The living room connects the venue and courtyard, fostering dialogue and connection. Arch techniques soften the space’s imagery, while crimson tones add warmth and vitality.
A male living room was created with healing tones and artistic textures, offering a warm embrace and protecting children from sudden emotional outbursts.
A charming two-story attic, wrapped like clouds in a private field, invites children to feel the surge of inner strength.
This secluded corner resembles scattered stars in the cosmic microwave, illuminating children’s colorful dreams through time.
Free Cloud Chessboard
Guided by nature, the design minimizes terrain alterations, aggregating spaces towards the center to form a multifunctional chessboard park themed “Chasing Clouds and Dreams.” Combining intelligence, playfulness, and entertainment, the park breaks conventional rigid layouts, rediscovering human care for boundaries within a changing landscape. It offers children novel and engaging spatial experiences.
Field Details
The expansive field employs soft lines and muted colors to seamlessly integrate the grid with renovated buildings and cloud corridors. Environmentally friendly materials such as antioxidant EPDM and permeable concrete enhance durability and practicality.
The entire field unfolds like a giant chessboard. While preserving original functions, the designer incorporated cloud-themed games like “Crossing Clouds and Picking Stars” and “Strolling on Cloud Peaks,” blending activity spaces with chess to inspire children’s imagination and creativity.
As children engage in challenging games, they push their limits and race towards the finish line. Near the slide, the Yunmeng Terminal Station features swings and resting areas. After playing, children can reflect, recall past experiences, and prepare for the future.
Beyond sports and play, the site manages outdoor drainage for the farm. To prevent drainage ditches from disrupting the visual appeal, the designer cleverly aligned linear drainage covers with ground lines, also addressing mosquito breeding concerns.
Self-Sustaining Ecological Island
Focusing on sustainability, the space fosters “self-creation” through eco-friendly measures like natural materials, energy storage, water conservation, recycling, and emission reduction. Embracing the concept “life is education,” the local ecology is transformed scientifically into a closed-loop system, offering children in this dry farming area a window to a new world.
The living public area fosters belonging by separating the movement of workers and children. By combining drying and washing areas, the original wall-adjacent space transforms into a ventilated zone with remote sensing to help children hang clothes regularly.
Public health spaces adopt a “non-water-first, non-incoming-water-second” system to manage water efficiently. Solar lighting embodies environmental protection, with materials chosen for natural brightness. The sunroof connects visually with the front area, creating multifunctional public-private spaces where children develop healthy habits with respect and care.
Following the local climate, the designer established a closed-loop natural ecosystem, planting vegetables and plants on the farm using scientific methods. A five-layer composting foundation—including pine roots, waste paper boxes, compost, and soil—enhances soil humidity and temperature, maximizes nutrient use, and expands planting areas.
Theater
Kunming Hotel
Beyond the self-built planting area, a multifunctional ecological park was added, featuring a theater, treehouse, Rabbit Island, and Kunqi Hotel. These spaces meet children’s diverse outdoor needs while integrating rabbit feces to reduce cave water alkalinity, generating irrigation water. The connection between Kunming and the natural climate forms part of the farm’s ecological closed-loop system.
During a home visit, designers noticed retaining walls made from local rock material and sheet metal in the residential walls. Embracing the philosophy “taken from the forest, returned to the forest,” this locally meaningful wall, nurtured by the seasons, symbolizes hope—growing into a towering tree on Mama’s farm.
Project Information
Chief Designers: Zhang Yaotian, Zhou Zhou, Zhang Jianwu, Xu Mingxuan, Xu Yunfang, Li Cong
Client: Dayunhai Mama Farm
Project Name: Dayun Sea Mama Farm
Location: Dongsheng Village, Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province
Completion Date: December 26, 2021
Project Area: 6,680 square meters
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