It is more often than that we find a project site with no noteworthy historical attractions, nor landscape of extraordinary scenic value,but it may be famed with some unique cultural artifacts that can inspire the design conception. TRANSMUTATION is to change such cultural artifact from its literal form to an architectural expression.

The master planning concept was generated from the connotation of bio-physical structure of the tea leaf. The site, itself, with 2 curvy shore lines along the lakefront, resembled the overlapping of 2 tea leaves and it symbolically laid down the basics for traffic and transportation planning. Tea leaf is longitudinal in shape with venation of pinnate-netted pattern. The veins arise pinnately from a single midrib and split into veinlets. These, in turn, very much resembles a development’s vehicular and pedestrian’s circulation pattern.

By mutation, we borrowed the pattern of leaf venation and used it in our planning. The site was divided into 4 zones: a green buffer with medium-rise residential tower on the west, a resort hotel and themed commercial complex at far north, rental villa zone with clubhouse in the centre and the villas zone on the south. There are two villa zones (rental and sales) that took shape from the form of the tea leaf venation both in planning and architecture.