"Sometimes," she said, "at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness..."
— Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun
Heart Fields opened in February 2024. It is the third building we have designed and built in Lindu Warm Village, as a continuation of Section Homestay and Mountain Muse Lodging & Nature.
Site
The site is a compound of three abandoned houses and a courtyard located in the suburbs of Suzhou.
The client requested that the first house at the entrance and the well behind it be preserved, so as to retain the pleasant scale and living memories of the original entry space. The rest was to be deconstructed and rebuilt.
Initial Challenges
How to design a rural bookstore has long been a puzzle for me.
In recent years, many rural bookstores have emerged, each expressing their own interpretation of the countryside. Among them are some excellent designs, but many others fall into clichés: using rammed-earth walls regardless of regional context, deliberately attempting to replicate the refined aesthetic of a white wall, forcing rough exposed concrete, or obsessively stitching together so-called rural elements. These rural bookstores have inexplicably become "guides" for rural construction, with some even labelling them "Regionalism."
Clearly, a rural bookstore in Suzhou does not need any of that.
Breakthrough
During a train transfer on a business trip, I revisited the site photos and noticed the textures retained on the surfaces from different periods. They revealed traces of construction and their interrelationships across time—an intriguing clue. Following this line of thought, I began to consider the relationship between the new addition and the existing building. I decided on a crisp, clear juxtaposition: the new construction will feature a dark finish, whereas the preserved section will retain white. The old and new structures exhibit a distinctive interlocking and staggered configuration that aligns with the existing textures, separated by a gap. These elements—volume expansion and contraction, black and white hues, and public vs. private areas—create a series of contrasting pairs.
Layout
The clear volumetric contrast determines the functional layout of the bookstore.
The renovated building is divided into two main volumes. The first is a single-story pitched-roof house, housing a café and a library.
The second volume contains, on the ground floor, a bookstore area surrounded by bookshelves and a salon area, with the homestay accommodation on the second floor. A gap is retained between the two volumes, bridged by a glass connector. The open space on the ground floor runs through the entire building and connects to the site, while a light well is placed in the bookstore area to bring in natural daylight.
A Room of One's Own
I particularly like the homestay rooms hidden behind the bookshelves, because “Even in the most trusted place within oneself, there is always a space of resistance, something that cannot be confessed.”
Given the small scale of this building, balancing public and private through circulation planning was a key consideration.
The ground floor is an open bookstore space. By opening the hidden doors tucked among the bookshelves, each room has its own private internal staircase leading to the second floor.
This not only resolves the spatial difficulty of arranging four homestay rooms within a cramped footprint, but also enhances privacy between them. All four rooms are accessed via independent staircases concealed behind the bookshelves, so guests do not disturb one another.
During the day, guests can quietly open the hidden doors on the bookshelves and enter their rooms. At night, the bookstore area can become a private space exclusively for the homestay guests.
The two rooms on the south side make use of cantilevered floor slabs to create sloping terraces where one can "lie flat." On the north side, a recessed balcony is carved out of the existing volume.. Initially, I wanted to make it more enclosed—a balcony open to the sky, or even a private open-air bath—but the client preferred a more open design to better interact with the rear site.
This is fine. Designers shouldn't be too stubborn.
Waiting
I delayed the release of this project for two years—something I hardly ever do with my previous works.
I have designed many bookstores, but this was my first venture into a rural one. I wasn't in a hurry to make it a so-called "internet-famous" bookstore; I wanted to observe it carefully.
Over these two years, the bookstore has operated very well and received numerous honors, such as being selected as one of the "2025 Jiangsu's Most Beautiful Bookstore Cases" and designated as a "New Public Cultural Space" development target for 2025 by the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism.
Xu Tao, one of the bookstore's co-founders, was also recognized as a "Rural Reading Promoter" for 2026 at the 5th National Reading Conference for his contributions to promoting reading in rural areas.
I am glad that people have come to appreciate this understated and restrained rural bookstore.
"When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country."
— William Hazlitt, On Going a Journey
CREDITS
Design Firm: Wutopia Lab
Chief Architect: Yu Ting
Project Architect: Huang He
Design Team: Xie Jialin, Lin Jianming (Intern)
Document Development: Jiangsu Huaya Engineering
Design Research Institute Co., Ltd.
Development Team: Qiao Ye, Zhang Xiaoqing, Chen Jieru, Jiang Jiaqing, Shi Shandong, Xu Cheng, Liu Yanan
Lighting Consultants: Chloe Zhang, Wei Shiyu
