Architecture firm Archermit has completed a striking new bakery and café called "Buzzy Sunny: Stone Kiln in the Valley" at the entrance of Lihua village in Luzhou, China. The small but sculptural building serves as a community gathering place and draws its distinctive design inspiration from the valley's seasonal pear blossoms and the region's monumental stone formations, translating these natural elements into a single artistic structure.
The unique design emerged from the architects' repeated site visits, during which they carefully observed the dramatic seasonal transformations of Lihua village throughout the year. In winter months, bare skeletal pear trees and scattered boulders created stark frames along the valley pathways, while spring brought an explosion of blossoms that filled the air and carpeted the ground below. The design team described a particularly formative image of delicate petals drifting among busy ants scurrying across the ground, a fleeting scene that became central to their architectural vision for the Stone Kiln in the Valley.
From these natural observations, the building takes its distinctive form as a petal appearing to rest delicately upon a stone foundation. The curved white rooftop creates a sense of lightness and fragility that contrasts beautifully with the substantial weight of the valley's rugged terrain, while the darker base reads as a grounded, permanent mass rooted in the landscape. This design approach reflects Archermit's "Imagery Architecture" philosophy, where architectural forms are generated directly from visual memories and cultural associations rather than purely functional considerations.
The sculptural rooftop represents a significant engineering achievement, utilizing a steel frame system with a simplified network of petal-like structural veins supported by five slender steel columns arranged in a precise circular pattern. A single shear wall encloses the bathroom facilities, cleverly hidden within the stone-like base to maintain the building's clean aesthetic lines. To achieve the remarkably thin and gracefully curling roof profile, the architects employed an innovative two-layer system using 3mm galvanized steel panels filled with rock wool insulation for thermal performance.
The roof surface receives a coating of decorative cement paint that produces a distinctive matte, petal-like whiteness that is simultaneously waterproof and lightweight. This carefully engineered layered steel panel system allows the entire roof structure to remain under 160mm (approximately 6.3 inches) in thickness, successfully maintaining the architects' intended sense of delicate lightness. The structural system's clarity and precision underscore the building's sculptural expression, ensuring that the roof's apparent fragility rests on solid engineering principles.
The Stone Kiln in the Valley occupies a carefully chosen site bordered by active farmland to the east and a public road to the west, with beautiful jacaranda trees naturally enclosing the northern and southern edges of the property. The architects strategically designed the west-facing side of the distinctive roof as a closed surface, effectively shielding the interior spaces from harsh afternoon sunlight and disruptive traffic noise from the adjacent road. In contrast, the eastern side opens generously to embrace gentle morning light and views of the surrounding farmland.
This thoughtful orientation creates a semi-enclosed courtyard space that seamlessly blends with the existing mature trees, extending the building's functional program into the surrounding natural landscape. The interior features a near-elliptical floor plan topped by the dramatic vaulted ceiling, which creates unique acoustic conditions throughout the space. Sounds naturally reverberate across the curved interior surfaces, producing exceptional clarity and resonance that proves particularly well-suited for musical performances.
Since the building's completion, the space has successfully hosted numerous small musical performances where children and adult visitors have experienced its remarkable acoustic qualities firsthand. The comprehensive program includes a full bakery with dedicated baking room, a comfortable café area, and flexible cultural display space, all unified beneath the signature petal-shaped roof. Large glass openings strategically connect these interior spaces to the exterior courtyard, reinforcing the architects' intention to create a strong sense of permeability between indoor and outdoor environments while maintaining the building's role as a true community gathering place.
