Lao Youting Pavilion: An Architectural Exploration of the Relationship Between Nature and the Built Environment
Lao Youting Pavilion
The Lao Youting Pavilion is one of the architectural projects featured in the 2024 Dianchi Art Season, titled “Home and the Future.” The pavilion is situated on the southern side of the Water Forest Arts District within the wetlands park of the Lao Yu River, overlooking Lake Dianchi.
Upon completion, the pavilion was not limited to serving as a temporary entrance for the festival; it was preserved permanently, acting as a spatial landmark for park entry while also providing a resting area for visitors.
Environmental Significance
The Lao Yu River wetlands are distinguished as part of the urban infrastructure, playing a vital role in water purification. Located on the edges of Lake Dianchi, these wetlands host groves of bald cypress trees, reflecting a natural balance between the urban environment and local ecosystems within growing cities.
The wetlands serve as the final stage of the natural water filtration process before water enters the lake, making this area crucial for maintaining water quality and surrounding ecological systems.
Social and Cultural Dimension
Beyond its environmental value, the area is home to many small fish species and is used by city residents during leisure time for fishing activities. Thanks to this frequent use, the pavilion has acquired a popular name reflecting its social role: Lao Youting Pavilion, meaning the place where people rest while fishing.
Here, the pavilion demonstrates an integrative dimension between the natural environment and social life, providing an interactive space characterized by tranquility and comfort, while also serving as an architectural landmark within the park.
Architectural Structure of the Pavilion
The Lao Youting Pavilion relies on slender steel columns and a segmented roof to create what can be described as an “artificial forest”, separating the busy road from the expanse of the water forest surrounding the lake. Through this design, the pavilion offers a transitional architectural experience that lies between being within a natural forest and sitting under a primitive shelter, harmoniously blending the atmosphere of nature with human craftsmanship and contemporary design.
Columns and Roof: A Delicate Structure
The dense steel columns, 40 mm in diameter, support a roof that may appear irregular at first glance, but in reality forms an integrated entity rightly called a “Ting”, the pavilion. This configuration reflects the capacity of modern architecture to reinterpret traditional structures and create experimental spaces that combine visual beauty with practical functionality, informed by evolving construction methods.
Internal Pathways and Movement Experience
Inside the pavilion, among the interwoven slender columns, hidden pathways unfold, guiding visitors toward the depths of Lake Dianchi. Here, visitors can gather or disperse according to their preferences, enhancing the experience of interacting with the surrounding environment and creating natural movement within the architectural space.
Light and Shadow: A Sensory Experience
The roof of the Lao Youting Pavilion allows light to enter in a fragmented manner, creating the sensation of standing within a deep shadow, while glimpses of the sky and the tips of nearby trees appear through the gaps. These light manipulations provide visitors with a sensory experience that changes according to their position within the pavilion and the movement of the sun, enhancing immersion in nature without losing the sense of secure shelter beneath the roof.
Reinterpreting Traditional Roofs
From a distance, the pavilion presents an image reminiscent of traditional Chinese four-sloped roofs. However, the deconstruction of the roof gives it an appearance closer to that of a thatched roof, imparting a sense of lightness and natural connection, away from its strict industrial character.
Material Between Industry and Nature
The actual material of the roof, steel sheets, transforms into what can be called a “dematerialized” material, stripped of its original industrial connotations. This approach invites a rethinking of the relationship between technology and nature, while also opening a window for contemplation on the connection between architectural form and building materials, highlighting the balance between architectural heritage and the modern environment.
Environmental Protection and Structural Design
In line with the environmental protection requirements of the Dianchi Wetlands Park, the pavilion’s foundations were not allowed to cause any disturbance or alteration to the existing ground surface. Therefore, the structural base had to remain above ground level to ensure the preservation of the natural terrain and avoid impacting the surrounding ecosystem.
Innovative Steel Base
To implement this principle, a steel plate was placed directly on the original surface to serve as the pavilion’s foundation, allowing loads to be distributed without the need for excavation or ground modification. Each column is anchored atop a solid square steel block measuring ten centimeters on each side, serving as a precise local base for every support point.
Balancing Stability and Nature Preservation
With minimal reinforcement, these small blocks carry the vertical loads of the slender columns. Their elevation above the ground clearly reflects a structural design attentive to the original terrain. This solution embodies the delicate balance between structural stability and environmental protection, highlighting how contemporary buildings can adapt to ecologically sensitive sites without compromising them.
Prefabrication to Minimize Intervention
To reduce the environmental impact on the site as much as possible, the structural system of the Lao Youting Pavilion relies on a prefabricated and assemblable design. All components, including columns, roof panels, joints, and bolts, were manufactured in the factory before being transported to the site, where they were carefully assembled in their final positions.
Lightweight Construction as Contemporary Art
This construction approach transforms the building process into an experience akin to installing a large-scale outdoor artwork, rather than relying on traditional heavy construction methods. Through this method, a balance emerges between industrial precision and artistic sensibility, allowing the pavilion to interact seamlessly with its surrounding environment without causing significant alterations or damage to the original terrain.
Primary Structural Unit
The fishing pavilion is based on a primary structural unit composed of six columns connected by flat or inclined steel plates. Multiple units are assembled together to form the pavilion’s overall space, and after stacking, some columns are removed to reduce density in specific areas.
Load Distribution and Spatial Variation
Loads are redirected through thinner, shorter columns connected to the plates at higher levels, creating zones with varying column densities within the space. This apparent randomness is precisely intentional, balancing structural stability with freedom of movement inside the pavilion while maintaining a rich and harmonious visual experience.
Technical Figures and Details
The pavilion features a total of 93 steel columns in contact with the ground, each a solid circular rod with a diameter of 40 mm, functioning in a capillary system to bear vertical loads. The flat and inclined plates are interconnected via hinged joints. Above this layer, 125 short steel columns with a diameter of 20 mm support additional plates, giving the roof a structural character that oscillates between flexibility and rigidity, allowing the pavilion to harmonize artistic form with structural function.
Sense of Lightness and Form Reinterpretation
The fishing pavilion embodies a distinctive structural stance. By deconstructing and reassembling the four-sloped roof, the pavilion acquires a sense of lightness, arising both from respect for the wetland ecosystem and from a renewed understanding of the relationship between the pavilion, the trees, and humans.
The Tree as an Authentic Structural Model
The pavilion’s construction mechanism evokes the significance of the “tree” as an authentic structural archetype, referencing the earliest shelters created by humans using tree branches. In this way, the architecture returns to the metaphor of the original tree, adding a historical and cultural dimension that bridges past and present, and reflecting lessons from architectural research.
Space and the Dialogue Between Nature and Architecture
Through this approach, the architecture creates an open space that can be traversed, inviting visitors to pause and reflect. The pavilion simultaneously belongs to nature and the technical world of human construction, establishing a new dialogue between the natural environment and architecture, and highlighting contemporary design’s ability to integrate environmental beauty with structural functionality.
✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight
The Lao Youting Pavilion can be considered an architectural experiment that offers clear advantages in terms of interaction with the natural environment and sensitivity to local ecological systems. For instance, the use of slender steel columns and a segmented roof minimizes the impact on the original terrain and enhances visitors’ experience of engaging with the natural surroundings, allowing a practical study of the relationship between architecture and environmental infrastructure. Additionally, the reliance on prefabricated structural elements demonstrates the potential for faster, more organized construction while reducing waste and on-site interventions.
However, some potential limitations can be noted when considering the application of this model in future projects. First, the experimental design heavily relies on specific construction methods (such as slender columns and apparent random distribution), which may not be suitable for all sites or architectural scales. Second, the focus on visitors’ sensory experience and interaction with nature may be difficult to replicate in densely urban environments or in projects requiring higher levels of safety and maintenance. Finally, from a sustainable architecture perspective, although the project respects the surrounding environment, the steel materials used require regular monitoring to maintain their sustainability and appearance over the long term.
Therefore, the Lao Youting Pavilion can serve as a valuable model for studying the balance between nature, technology, and human experience, while some of its elements may need to be adapted if applied in different contexts, whether in terms of scale, usage, or environmental setting. Such projects provide architects with useful insights into experimental design, management of transitional spaces, and engagement with the natural landscape, without being considered a universally applicable model in all cases.
Project information
- Architects: Atelier Deshaus
- Area: 171 m²
- Year: 2024
- Photographs: Ce Wang
ArchUp: Technical Analysis of the Laoyouting Pavilion in the Wetland Park
This article provides a technical analysis of the Laoyouting Pavilion as a case study in experimental architecture characterized by high environmental sensitivity and interaction with the natural landscape. To enhance archival value, we present the following key technical and design data:
The structure rests on 93 vertical steel columns with a diameter of 40 mm and 125 short columns with a diameter of 20 mm, supporting a segmented roof of flat and sloped steel plates. The total shade area provided by the pavilion is approximately 120 square meters, while maintaining a visual openness of up to 70% of its perimeter due to the slimness of the columns. All prefabricated elements were installed atop a steel base placed directly on the ground without excavation, protecting the wetland ecosystem.
The design employs a “minimal architecture” strategy. The segmented roof creates dynamic patterns of light and shadow, allowing 30% of direct sunlight to enter intermittently, mimicking the dappled shade of a tree canopy. A black reflective floor enhances the sense of depth and merges the structure’s reflection with the surrounding environment. The layout is designed to create two main internal pathways that encourage the natural flow of visitors toward Lake Dianchi.
In terms of environmental and functional performance, the pavilion achieves full integration with the sensitive site by not modifying the original terrain, making it a model for construction in protected areas. It functions as a transitional space and a visual landmark, raising visitors’ environmental awareness while providing a resting point. The use of industrial materials (steel) creates an intentional contrast with the surrounding nature, enhancing a visual dialogue between the human-made and the natural.
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