Flood Control Station on the River Embankment, Yongxiu County

Yongxiu County is located at the confluence of the Xiu River and Gan River as they flow into Poyang Lake. The area is crisscrossed with waterways, and embankments have been built along the rivers. Every kilometer or so along these embankments, a flood control station has been constructed for personnel to guard the embankments during the flood season.

The uniqueness of this house lies in its utter lack of uniqueness. Its structure is the most common brick-and-concrete type found in rural China: plastered masonry walls with painted surfaces, a cast-in-place roof, and building components such as dark red metal security doors, gold-colored aluminum alloy sliding windows, blue machine-made glazed tiles, and PVC drainage pipes—all of which are the most prevalent and standard models in the Chinese countryside. It resembles a prototype of early 21st-century Chinese rural architecture. In this temporal and spatial context, if you needed to build a small shelter for someone to live in, this house would be the result of keeping all options at their system defaults. In China's industrialized society, this also represents the lowest production cost while meeting the most common needs.