Gold Architecture, Building and Structure Design · 2020
Sun Shed Renovation
- A' Design Award 2020 Gold Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
- Awarded April 15, 2020
- CLIENT: Mix Architecture
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 27,578
- Verification code C6793F287C · Verify this award
About Sun Shed Renovation
Sun Shed is the renovation of an agricultural shed into a banquet hall on an ecological farm in Jiangsu, China. The layout replaces the common middle-axis plan with a circular arrangement that radiates from a central stage, so guests are seated without primary and secondary positions. Twelve tree-shaped columns woven from yellow-brown bamboo hide the original steel pillars and form a forest within the hall. Yew seedlings grown on the farm surround the space. The renovated hall also hosts meetings, performances and other social events.
Sun Shed Renovation by Ziye Wu represents a compelling example of contemporary adaptive reuse architecture, wherein agricultural infrastructure undergoes transformation into a venue of remarkable spatial poetry and material refinement. The project demonstrates how vernacular building typologies, specifically the utilitarian greenhouse, can be reimagined through thoughtful intervention to create spaces of genuine atmospheric distinction. The designer's decision to retain the industrial steel skeleton while introducing sculptural bamboo columns establishes a productive dialogue between manufactured precision and organic craft traditions, suggesting an architectural philosophy that honors existing structures while activating them through strategic material insertion. The bamboo elements, with their elegant spreading forms that recall both natural growth patterns and historical vaulting systems, function as both structural markers and phenomenological devices that modulate the scale of the vast interior into more intimate zones suitable for gathering. The incorporation of living lavender plantings as ground cover rather than conventional flooring materials demonstrates a biophilic design sensibility that connects occupants to natural cycles of growth and seasonal change while introducing olfactory dimensions to the spatial experience. The central circular stage, elevated slightly and finished in warm timber, provides both functional focus for events and symbolic centering that organizes the surrounding seating arrangement into a democratic configuration where all attendees maintain visual connection to shared activity. The starfield backdrop, while theatrical in nature, extends the ceiling's celestial quality into the vertical plane, creating an immersive environment that transcends the boundaries of the former agricultural structure. Viewers might contemplate how this renovation speaks to broader questions of architectural memory, material sustainability, and the capacity of thoughtful design to transform humble structures into spaces of genuine wonder.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The design of a common middle-axis one-word banquet space model, adjusted to the central stage as the basis of the circular radiation-type banquet space, the formation of the location of the centripetal and the good. Feasting people no longer have primary and secondary, the weight of the points, can feel at home.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- After entering the operation stage, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the actual demand for social activities far exceeds the design expectations. The space originally conceived is only used as a banquet function such as a wedding birthday and is now selected by a wider range of social activities such as the local marathon team annual meeting, the music performance of country singers, the venue of entertainment programs, and the release of corporate products in the future meeting.
- Tags
- Renovation, Adaptive Reuse, Village, Architecture, Old and New
- Production Technology
- Selection of materials to reflect the country elements, the use of the farm planted yew seedlings surrounding space to form a true tree-lined background, yew release of oxygen to enhance the climate conditions of the site. Yellow-brown bamboo woven into 12 tree-shaped pillars, not only hidden the original construction of steel pillars, weakened its industrial traces, but also in an abstract form of the tree under the space form, forming a forest in the ballroom.
- Design Challenge
- After field research, we found that the project itself is relatively isolated, the surrounding environment to the development of rural areas, there is no unique natural and cultural landscape, the arrival of the urban population is not very convenient. Therefore, how to break through all kinds of restrictive conditions, as far as possible to excavate the potential of the project itself, and to find a breakthrough to enhance the value of space, the effective stimulation of local rural vitality is the whole design process we need to ponder and solve the problem.
- Project Duration
- The project is designed in July 2017 and finished in January 2018 in Jiangsu, China
- Operation Flow
- In 2017 Mix Architecture was commissioned by Chun Qin Yuan Ecological Farm, the north of the Yizheng City ecological Farm in a sun shed for the renovation design. The farmer hopes to adjust its function with less input and use the banquet hall as its main function to maximize its benefits.
- Research
- The pursuit of space is the architect's inborn belief. Space starts with sensibility and ends with reason. When it is completed, it stands there quietly, watching the scenes of the actual scene, the curtain opening. The curtain call was overwhelming and it remained motionless.
- Inspiration
- The design starts in the countryside and ends in the countryside. Our design concept stems from a rural scene: the blue sky, innocent fields, buzzing frogs, the fragrant air in the shade of the trees. It attracts you to stay, stay, or suffocate, or play. You can feel the protection of the sun and the moon, the cold and the hot summer, and you can feel the power of nature.
Colors of Sun Shed Renovation
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We transform existing spaces through innovative architectural renovation. Our award-winning practice specializes in adaptive reuse, rural revival and urban renewal projects that create meaningful experiences. From ecological farms to urban buildings, we deliver thoughtful design solutions.
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