A neighborhood food market and canteen for Chongqing’s Luhu community that combines three everyday experiences and uses staggered ‘cloud’ eaves and fully opening façades to blend indoor dining with greenery and daylight.
XU Studio designed Yunlang Canteen and Lushang Youxuan Market as commercial amenities for the Luhu residential community in Chongqing, framed around three user experiences: everyday warmth, the comfort of home, and a relaxed getaway.
The exterior uses staggered 'cloud' eaves with alternating solid and void to create semi-covered outdoor seating embraced by planting.
Full-height folding doors and top-hung windows allow the interior to open fully to the outdoors, enabling natural ventilation and dining amid sunlight and shifting tree shadows.
XU Studio was commissioned by developer Wanhua to design Yunlang Canteen and the adjacent Lushang Youxuan Market as key commercial amenities for the Luhu residential community in Chongqing. The work is presented as a neighborhood-level intervention rather than a landmark building: it focuses on everyday use, comfort, and a leisurely atmosphere for residents.
The project is organized around three intertwined experiences: the warmth of everyday life, the comfort of coming home, and the relaxed pace of a getaway. This programmatic framing guided decisions about scale, openings, and the relationship between inside and outside—prioritizing familiar, domestic qualities over formal spectacle.
A defining exterior move is a series of staggered "cloud" eaves. These alternating solid and void elements form semi-covered outdoor seating zones that are embraced by greenery. The eaves modulate sun and rain while producing layered shadow patterns.
Façade openings are designed to be operable: full-height folding doors and top-hung windows can be opened completely when weather permits. This allows free airflow between interior and exterior and creates a porous edge so diners can eat amid sunlight and the shifting shadows of nearby trees.
The interior is intended as an extension of everyday domestic experience—comfort, informal social exchange, and ease of use. The ability to open the façades fully supports cross-ventilation and daylighting strategies, and it blurs the boundary between market stalls, canteen seating, and outdoor tables.
Planting and outdoor seating are integral to the concept. Landscape and planting design were handled by Dongshan Plant Atelier and Hainan Liangzuo Floral & Plant Art Design, which shape the outdoor rooms formed by the eaves. Vegetation helps define seating pockets, softens the built edges, and contributes to the seasonal quality of light and shadow described by the architects.
Lead architect: Xu Shijin. Design team: Xu Shijin, Xu Yijun, Liu Yuchen, Fan Ruonan, Luo Chengyu, Sun Chen, Jiang Yan, Cai Mengyu, Zhang Ziyi, Liu Zhiyuan, Li Xiaoye, Fang Jiahong and interns Xu Hao and Zhuang Haoran. Landscape and planting: Dongshan Plant Atelier, Hainan Liangzuo Floral & Plant Art Design. Structural design: Shanghai Qingxi Structural Design. Façade lighting: Bpi. Signage: XU Studio and In the pot. Photographs credited to Arch-Exist and DONG. Specified manufacturers include Limestone and Tyvek.
Why this matters for neighborhood retail
The project demonstrates a pragmatic approach to small-scale commercial architecture in a residential complex: prioritize user comfort, flexible indoor-outdoor relationships, and landscape integration rather than high-concept form. The operable façades and staggered eaves create adaptable outdoor dining that can respond to weather and seasonal change, which supports everyday use by residents.
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