Seaside Pavilion perches on the edge of woods and beach at Bohai Sea as a reception space. Architects renovated the original building and added various areas for reading, tea, meditation, dining, and resting. Forest and Sea surround the site, where people spend leisure time in the excellent vista.
XUTING
Touched with the great scape, the architect aims to blend the building into its surroundings and experience the place too much in the site. The design strategy applies to transparency, including glass curtainwall and a whole roof which construct the new body. Architect Donghyun JUNG mentioned, "We pursuit weakening the building in the environment, strengthening the physical sense to nature and cutting the edges, which also inherits from XUTING in the eastern Shanshui Painting." This spatial prototype reflects the relations between architecture and nature in Shanshui Paintings, which exists in four statuses: Hidden, Penetrated, Blurred, and Transparent in the environment.
Natural Corners
At the layout, to converse with the different landscapes, the design derives the concept of Natural Corners, which correspond to diverse event spaces, like a reading corner to the Sea, a tea corner to the forest, a meditation corner to the woods, and a dining corner to the beach and Sea, which around by the partition wall, the curved line introduce the sight to views, to an infinite nature – close to the corner of the soul. These partitions do not reach the ceiling, and there is no door on this floor, which makes a continuity vision; the lighting and installation in the wall keep a balance between purity and function. The ceiling and flooring remain the same material from inner to outer and blur the edge, forming a disappeared boundary, creating a timeless exploration in a measured area.
Time to Sea and Forest
The leaf shadow sculpts into the cement wall and wooden furniture; the wind flows through the Sea, and the siren by ship echoes follows the sunrise. The natural texture of materials responds to the landscape by touch. Time rivers are immersed in a part of life there.
Walk in Wilds
The outdoor corridor as an interface area connects to the walkway, constructing the conversation between the people, Sea, and woods. The route zigzags away the trees and approaches a primary path, which has ten meters vertically from the entrance of the building. When climbing in the woods, three spots as terraces bond the stage, relieve the tired and make a vacation full of rituals.
Seaside Pavilion achieves a natural existence as XUTING-like by a contemporary language, presenting an atmosphere immersed in nature and a building concealed in the environment.
Project information
Project name: Seaside Pavilion
Location: Qinhuangdao, Hebei, China
Total floor area: 600㎡
Materials: Micro-cement, glass, steel, concrete, woods
Design period: 10/2020-02/2021
Completion: 07/2021
Project credits
Architects: PLAT ASIA
Scopes: Architectural renovation, Interiors, Landscape
Design team: PLAT ASIA atelier d – Donghyun Jung, Guowei Liu, Yuanyu Liao
Architecture LDI: Beijing Huachengboyuan Engineering Technology Group
Interiors LDI: YiBoChuan (Shandong) Design Institute
Landscape LDI: PLAT ASIA simo org – Xiaozhan Zhang
Lighting design: Tungsten Studio (Shanghai)
Decoration design: Shanghai TaiSheGuan / Symmetry International Design Center
Photo: Arch-Exist Photography
Video: PLAT ASIA ndn lab
