Screen Pavilion | Ray&Emilio Studio

Architecture, PAVILION

Screen Pavilion

The project is called “Screen Pavilion”, which is the most exemplary of the public service pavilions in the Xianghu Scenic Area. Xianghu is the core scenic spot of urban life in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou. It has a long history where the Yue kingdom was located in the Spring and Autumn warring state Period. Now the Xianghu Lake area has been turned into a city park that accommodates the life of the local community. Parents take their children to the beach and play in the sands, young people come to ride or running at night, many couples come here for dating. This project is commissioned by the Xianghu National Tourist Management Committee and cooperative agencies to establish a public service pavilion that will provide citizens and tourists a better place to stay. This only covers an area of 66 square meters Xianghu Pavilion is located in the south of Xianghu Academician Island Dingshan beach. The pavilion looks out over the lake, the beach, and the stone arch bridge. Behind the pavilion is the hillside, the road and the gallery pavilion. All the scenery is on the edge of the lake. The “Screen Pavilion” is also in this beautiful place. Based on these factors, we believe that this pavilion should be camouflaged in the existing natural landscape. But a simple opening will only cause the views from inside to be disorganized. Therefore, we hope that this opening can present itself in a state mixed with “screens”, a state between occlusion and opening. As “Still holding the half-hidden pipe” is the most traditional aesthetic cognition in Chinese culture. We hope to present a kind of beauty with dreamy explored and expanded possibilities.

The “Screen” as an articulation
We perform a transformation of the “screen”, during this we use the “screen” as an installation of art, defining it as an “articulation” of space, forming links between architecture and the nature, people and the environment, making the building itself a medium between the human and nature. Through the intervention of the arches the “screen”, we break the barriers between the internal and external spaces, allowing these joints boards formed by screens to penetrate deeply into the space and extend to the external environment at the same time. As seen in this project, the two transparent glass bodies with are originally independent of each other. It is due to the existence of these joints that the centripetal force generated by them firmly binds. He established a dialogue between spaces and spaces. On the other hand, these “screens” are no longer limited to the perimeter of the building, but extend more parts beyond the limitation, opening, extend and coexist with the nature. This also establishes the connection between the internal space and the external natural environment. This ensemble makes the existence of the display facilities extremely unsustainable, which really connects space, architecture, people and the environment, and together constructs a kind of humanistic landscape environment.

photography by © Yilong Zhao

The “Screen” as capturer
As Wu Hung mentioned in “Double Screen”, in traditional screens, screens have strong spatial control. They define space and location, and control human perception. In our context, we try to make the “screen pavilion” able to capture and control people’s perception of this space: on the one hand, physical perception, so that the human body can clearly perceive the existence of the screen. By incorporating a sphere in negative form within the union of 4 screens, the visual center of a visitor in height of 1.5m is always located in the center of the sphere. This requires strict control of the height of the building. Through scale control, a vertical symmetry is formed, which is precisely related to the scale of the human body. Just like the vertical symmetry that Mies van der Rohe established in the Barcelona Pavilion. On the other hand, it is narrative perception. The “Pavilion” is also in itself a spatial medium, and can be considered as a stage for social interaction. It happens that the delicate screens intertwine to form a complex and tortuous gallery, which provides the visitor a space to explore. This makes this narrative scroll able to unfold gradually in the process of moving and observing. When looking from any point, the screen will establish a perfectly marked view, structuring the existing landscape. People will visually capture the arch bridge and gallery pavilion in the distance through the frames of these corridors, they were originally hidden in this environment, but due to the frame of these screens, these nodes of the landscape are well emphasized. This type of control establishes the narrative connection of the landscape, forming a narrative space structure.

The transparency of “Screen”
We use simple materials，northeast China ash on the ceiling and ceramic tile on the floor. On the part of the facade, we reveal it with more complex materials. Translucent rattan lampshades and glass walls have different transparency. Meanwhile，the transparency of materiality also establishes a transparency of time, presenting the most poetic aspect with architectural materiality. The translucency of this rattan material makes it completely different in the perception of the backlight face and the luminous face. Due to the east-west orientation of the building, the intervention of light can present different internal spatial states at different times, giving the building a sense of time. The two materials with different permeability also make people present a comfortable environment under the roof cover and screen panel as the vertical face. The screen also provides a good sense of internal privacy and security.

The “Screen” as a public place
This project uses an abstract transformation of the traditional element of screens from the architectural perspective, and explores the possibility of building as an installation of screens aligned in a natural field. We have built an open public environment, which has the multiplicity of views and spatial complexity like Chinese gardens. And it also has a camouflage that landscape architecture should have, in which with the transparency of the building the architecture can better penetrate nature. This modest place is equipped with a small activity room, a tea bar and a large number of indoor and outdoor rest places, which can meet the needs of most parent-child courses, group learning activities and good for daily leisurely life. The place also have more user-friendly features, such as a beach for children and a place to park strollers. After this pavilion was established, it quickly became a very popular location for families to relax and young people dating place.