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Architects: Daxing Jizi Design
- Area: 400 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Chao Zhang
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Lead Architect: Zhenwei ZENG
Text description provided by the architects. The spatial installation “Floating Pavilion,” created by Daxing Jizi Design, is presented at the 3rd Public Urban Festival “Let’s Gala” held at Longgang Vanke Plaza in Shenzhen. The artfully-arranged matrix of glowing pavilions illuminates the square during the night, transforming the everyday urban space into a captivating realm filled with fantasy and creativity, and turning it into a public place brimming with emotions and vitality. The installations’ organic forms and the immersive radiance offer an excellent place for relaxation and contemplation in the evening. It stimulates resonance and connections with local culture, and seeks to explore more possibilities for urban public life.
Inspiration: Intervention of Another Domain. Floating Pavilion draws inspiration from ancient marine plankton the jellyfish. Inspired by the jellyfish’s graceful umbrella-like form and various colors, the installations focuses on creating a free space for “floating thoughts” and a surreal experience of light. The design is not simply a imitation of natural life forms but an exploration of possibilities between realism and abstraction. It brings another dimension of existence and emotions into the present moment, serving as a medium to rethink and reshape the multiple relationships between people, city, and nature. A group of luminous structures with smooth curves and serene aura gently intervenes in the city’s public space at night, creating a place of great inclusiveness. The soft and embracing light dissolves the clamor and bustle of the square and roads, filtering out the dazzling city lights around, and creating a tranquil atmosphere for contemplation. People can enter the body of the “jellyfish,” gazing upwards, wandering, resting, having a moment of “deceleration,” and experiencing poetic sensations and boundless imaginative space in the gradual change of colors. In the context of public events, the installations adopts a completely open attitude, offering a delightful space for “in-person social contact” that encourages people of all ages to explore the installation and its surroundings spontaneously. It accommodates a diverse range of activities, helping to restore the warmth and vitality of the community, and facilitating the process of reconnecting, reflecting and exploring our shared future.
Practice: Fantasy Encounters of Light. The site for this year’s Public Urban Festival is located at the bustling central square of Longgang district, which has relatively traditional functions. Our strategy is to activate the original site through the design of the installations, and temporarily transform it into an artful park filled with fantasy, as well as a venue for night-time public cultural events. Two different scales of luminous structures form a composition of “1+3” including one large pavilion and three medium-sized pavilions.The translucent inflatable film covers the metal frame of the pavilions, forming a lightsome, curved surface that presents a hazy texture when light penetrates through. The material’s sunshade and waterproof characteristics make the pavilions temporary shelters for the unpredictable summer weather in the South. The color of the film surfaces take inspiration from natural organisms, presenting delightful shades of green, purple, and yellow. The programmed lighting system within utilizes full-spectrum RGB lamps, enabling colors to slowly shift over time. The rhythmic “breathing” frequency, set at every six seconds, synchronizes with the floating rhythm of deep-sea jellyfish as well as human breathing, offering a unique and vibrant experience.
The jellyfish-like metal framework and straps are traced with bright orange lines, creating a consistent color scheme. The straps serve as the primary support structure for the installations’ film surfaces, allowing for flexible and effective adaptation to various weather and environmental changes. During hot summer days, the adjustable straps accommodate the expansion and contraction of the film surfaces between day and night. When encountering extreme weather like a typhoon, the film structure can be deflated and tied to the metal frame with the straps to ensure the installations’ safety and stability.
The core structure of the installation is a large pavilion with a diameter of 7 meters and a height of 5.5 meters, creating a visual focal point as a landmark. This pavilion offers a scale that can be looked up to, resembling a giant jellyfish in the deep sea, immersing people in a world of fantasy between light and shadow. The sound installation integrated within the pavilion adds a richer experience from the auditory perspective. Surrounding the large pavilion, three medium-sized pavilions with a diameter of 3.5 meters and a height of 2.5 meters are arranged in the positions of equilateral triangles. These pavilions are designed to be closer to the human body’s scale, encouraging people to actively explore and interact, and becoming a part of the installations. In the design proposal, three small-scale “jellyfish” with a diameter of 1.75 meters each, are flexibly distributed within the matrix. These small loungers are filled with liquid luminescent material, providing a resilient structure that offers a ideal resting spot, filling the void of lacking public resting facilities in the square. However, this concept was not able to be realized this time due to the on-site management requirements. We hope there will be opportunities in the future to fully realize the concept of “public furniture.” As the summer heat gradually subsides at night, people naturally draw closer to the installations, sharing a slow and serene moment in this illuminated space. The structure of inflatable film gently floats amidst the night, looks soft and relaxed; the slowly changing halo is transparent and colorful, veiled with another layer of mystery, and within the brightness lies yet another layer of brightness. We invite people to join us in this floating reverie, journeying through billions of years in the depths of the sea and the universe, where shoals of fish gracefully flow like stars in the sky. Let our thoughts temporarily escape from the everyday distractions, and ascend with radiance.
Reflection: Bridging, Connecting and Resonating. Daxing Jizi Design's exploration and practice of public art installations lie between the “hardware” of architectural design and the “software” of artistic expression. Our works often draw inspiration from nature, using light as a medium to create a warm and approachable atmosphere, seeking a balance between aesthetics and functionality, and aiming to find strategies that captivate and invite the public to engage with the installations. Nowadays, when social media dominates our daily life, urban living often seems monotonous, trivial, lonely, and fragmented. Through small-scale practices directly intervenes into daily life, Daxing Jizi Design Studio creates “middle grounds” that merge with and transcend the everyday scenes. The intervention transforms the ambiance and functionality of the original sites, providing an authentic and distinctive experience that counters the feeling of homogeneity and isolation imposed by large-scale and technology-driven city and architecture.
We regard our installations as direct carriers of personal emotions and imagination, providing a sense of tranquility and joy, while also releasing and healing emotions, and sparking the emergence of inspiration. On a larger scale, the installations create natural spaces for encounters and interactions, opening up more possibilities for diverse activities and new consumption scenarios. The participation and communication of individuals in these kind of cultural experiences will further internalize and strengthen the sense of belonging and cohesion with the community and urban life, leading to a broader sense of identity and unity. We hope that our works can act as “cohesion facilitators” in community life, promoting the flow, connection, and resonance of urban culture, economy, and beyond.
