Ecology Hotpot

[Patricia]

Thedesign celebrates hotpot, a popular dish that has become synonymous with the region. MUDA took this opportunity to integrate hotpot culture, which is not only a food culture in Chengdu region but also a leisure lifestyle, with natural ecological environment, creating a restaurant that respects the original ecology and is in line with modern consumption and living style.

Garden Hotpot Restaurant is located in the hinterland of Sansheng Township, surrounding a lotus pond, hidden in an Eucalyptus forest. In order to create a comfortable close-to-nature dining environment, MUDA-Architects decided to eliminate the architectural scale, leaving out walls, only using pillars and boards to lightly hide the building in the woods. Therefore, designers wanted the building to merge into the environment, connecting people to nature.

The natural environment of the site is beautiful but complex. Tens of eucalyptus trees must be preserved, and the terrain is tortuous with a maximum drop of nearly 2 meters. In order to respect the natural environment and minimize human intervention in this natural site, MUDA-Architects conducted a manual mapping and recorded the site in person, and the building was designed according to the location of each individual eucalyptus tree and the lake. Moreover, the free curve of the roof is designed according to the site characteristics and function.

What makes this project even more impressive is its small scale and low cost. The construction team, local migrant workers, had no knowledge and no appropriate tools. In order to ensure quality, architects simplified complex structural nodes and made strategic adjustments in a way that the workers could understand. The whole building applied steel structure welding technology, which greatly shortens the construction period and reduces the cost.

The project site is known for its superior ecology, close to nature and far away from noise. Therefore MUDA-Architects have taken this opportunity to integrate the local hotpot culture with the natural ecological environment, creating a building in harmony with surrounding nature. MUDA decided to eliminate the architectural scale, leaving out walls, only using pillars and boards to lightly hide the building in the wood. The construction forms along the lake and naturally surrounds the lotus pond, looking like the steams and smokes from the boiling pots curling between the pillars and trees.

The site is secure.

The ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

In the Anthropocene, increasing pervasive plastic pollution is creating a new environmental compartment, the plastisphere. How the plastisphere affects microbial communities and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) is an issue of global concern. Although this has been studied in aquatic ecosystems, our understanding of plastisphere microbiota in soil ecosystems remains poor. Here, we investigated plastisphere microbiota and ARGs of four types of microplastics (MPs) from diverse soil environments, and revealed effects of manure, temperature, and moisture on them. Our results showed that the MPs select for microbial communities in the plastisphere, and that these plastisphere communities are involved in diverse metabolic pathways, indicating that they could drive diverse ecological processes in the soil ecosystem. The relationship within plastisphere bacterial zero-radius operational taxonomic units (zOTUs) was predominantly positive, and neutral processes appeared to dominate community assembly. However, deterministic processes were more important in explaining the variance in ARGs in plastispheres. A range of potential pathogens and ARGs were detected in the plastisphere, which were enriched compared to the soil but varied across MPs and soil types. We further found that the addition of manure and elevation of soil temperature and moisture all enhance ARGs in plastispheres, and potential pathogens increase with soil moisture. These results suggested that plastispheres are habitats in which an increased potential pathogen abundance is spatially co-located with an increased abundance of ARGs under global change. Our findings provided new insights into the community ecology of the microbiome and antibiotic resistome of the soil plastisphere.

The resulting design thus eliminates walls, and uses only slim steel pillars to support the ivory white roof three metres above the wooden platform, its form designed to have a minimal impact on the local ecology. The open-air restaurant design outlines the existing shape of the lake and towering trees, weaving inside the forest organically. The designers reveal that the building's shape resembles steam rising from boiling hotpots, curling between the trees.

Open to public, the airy design romantically integrates with its surrounding nature, with visitors sitting on simple white rounded chairs placed around a table, the landscape spray simmering from the lake and perfuming the transparent spaces within Garden Hotpot Restaurant.

Text description provided by the architects. Chengdu's leisurely and warm temperament makes it a tourism magnet in Southwest China. And hotpot, as part of the local cultural characteristics, has become synonymous with Chengdu, which is not only a food culture, but also a leisure lifestyle. At the end of 2018, MUDA-Architects received a renovation design commission in Sansheng Township, Chengdu. Sansheng Township is located in Chengdu suburb, known as "Chengdu green lung", with unique natural conditions and ecological resources. MUDA takes this opportunity to integrate hotpot culture with natural ecological environment, creating a restaurant that respects the original ecology and in line with modern consumption style.

Garden Hotpot Restaurant is in the hinterland of Sansheng Township, surrounding a lotus pond, hidden in a eucalyptus forest. On the premise of paying the greatest respect to the natural environment, MUDA decides to eliminate the architectural scale, leaving out walls, only using pillars and boards to lightly hide the building in the woods, letting the building gently integrate with the site and delineating the shape of lake in a light and peaceful way.

The construction forms along the lake, looking like the steams and smokes from the boiling pots curling between the pillars and trees. Thin columns are evenly distributed on both sides, and the free curve of the roof forms several transparent viewing frames, so that different views can be appreciated during the whole process of walking. The bottom platform is consistent with the curve of the roof, and the same method is used in the design to echo each other, demonstrating the consistency and integrity of the whole space.

In total, the building has a circumference of 290 meters, with the height of 3 meters, and the width varies with the natural environment. The platform is made of anti-corrosive wood, and the roof is made of galvanized steel sheet, coated with white fluorocarbon paint, which complements the surrounding lush environment. A series of steel columns with a diameter of 88 mm is used as the supporting structure, and it blends into the straight trunks of eucalyptus trees and disappears into nature. The curved wooden railing by the lakeside is built for customers to enjoy the views, and blur the boundary of the lake, which brings people closer to nature.

The natural environment of the site is beautiful but complex. Tens of eucalyptus trees must be preserved, and the terrain is tortuous with a maximum drop of nearly 2 meters. In order to respect the natural environment and minimize human intervention in this natural site, MUDA conducted manual mapping and recorded of the site in person, and the building was designed according to the location of eucalyptus trees and lake. Moreover, the free curve of the roof is designed according to the site characteristics and function.

At the same time, it is also an experiment for MUDA in small scale and low cost architecture. The construction team, local migrant workers, have no professional knowledge and tools. In order to ensure the quality, architects simplified complex structural nodes and made strategic adjustments in a way that workers could understand. The whole building applied steel structure welding technology, which greatly shortens the construction period and reduces the cost.

The first phase completed in April is open to the public, which is highly integrated with the nature. The building is light and transparent. Users sit around the lake, and the landscape spray permeates the whole space, starting a romantic and wonderful ecological hotpot tour.

The fragmentation of tropical forests remains a major driver of avian biodiversity loss, particularly for insectivores, yet the mechanisms underlying area sensitivity remain poorly understood. Studies in lowland systems suggest that loss of food resources, changes to light microenvironments, increased nest predation, and dispersal limitation are possible mechanisms, but these are untested for montane tropical bird communities. In this study, we related avian functional traits to area sensitivity (quantified using beta estimates from a multi-species occupancy model) to test the above four hypotheses for a cloud forest bird community (both resident species and just resident insectivores) in the Colombian Western Andes. We found that species with more specialized diets and those that use the canopy and subcanopy (loss of food hypothesis), larger relative eye sizes (light microhabitat hypothesis), and larger clutch sizes (nest predation hypothesis) were significantly more area sensitive. By contrast, there was no support for the dispersal limitation hypothesis; instead, we found that insectivores with more pointed wing shapes, and more aerial lifestyles, were significantly more fragmentation sensitive. These results suggest that reduced vegetation structure, loss of late-successional plant species, and loss of epiphytic plants may reduce food availability in fragments. Similarly, the ability to tolerate higher light intensity near fragment edges, or when traversing matrix habitat, may be important for persistence in fragments and suggests that habitat configuration may be of special importance in fragmented Andean landscapes. Overall, a lack of information on foraging, movement, and breeding ecology complicates avian conservation in the Andes.

3a8082e126