Cultural Service Center and Local Workshops of Ruyi Village / WCY Regional Studio

Curated by 韩双羽 - HAN Shuangyu

Architects: WCY Regional Studio
Area: 2093 m²
Year: 2021
Photographs:Haohao Xu, Sheng Ouyang, Juncheng Meng, Biao Hu
Lead Architect: Chunyu Wei, Sheng Ouyang, Rong Ren

Text description provided by the architects. The Cultural Service Center and Special Workshops in Ruyi Village, Shuikou Town, which was designed by the local studio led by Chunyu Wei, is located in Shuikou Town, Jianghua Yao Autonomous County. The town was located in the flooded area of the tearful river reservoir expansion project, but now it is located in an area surrounded by longitudinal mountains and relatively flat.

The Cultural Service Center and Special Workshops in Ruyi Village, which integrates village offices, villagers' activities, reading, arts, and cultural performances, local cultural and tourism promotion, and the display and sale of special products, covers an area of about 1835 square meters, with a construction area of about 2093 square meters. The site is divided into three terraces along with the height difference, in order from west to east: cultural service center, atrium theater, and special workshop.

Jianghua Yao Autonomous County is the county seat with the highest concentration of Yao people in the hinterland of Nanling in my country, and is known as the "Yao Capital of Shenzhou". The Yao villagers of Shuikou Town used to live in the deep forest, known as the "High Mountain Yao". They believe in King Pan as their ancestor. On the 16th day of the 10th month of the lunar calendar, a solemn ritual is held throughout the county, known as the Panwang Festival, which is also known as the "Second Spring Festival" of the Yao people. The Yao people are willing to wear traditional costumes and play long drums and music on the Pan Wang Festival and other festive days to express their enthusiasm through the Yao long drum dance.

The building carries the villagers' daily activities such as recreation and office, as well as customary activities such as local rituals and long drums dance, which prompted us to intentionally construct a spatial place with both material and spiritual significance in the design.

Cultural Service Center and Local Workshops of Ruyi Village / WCY Regional Studio - Exterior Photography, Brick — south side staircase. Image © Haohao Xu

Hall and patio. The spatial prototype of the atrium stage comes from the halls and patios of the old and new houses in the region. In addition to the daily life of the Yao people, the hall also performs special ceremonial functions. The hall, the patio, and the atrium theater stage construct the spatial sequence of "row gate - courtyard - patio - hall" by combining the gable, atrium, patio, and theater stage. The design aims to construct the atrium stage as a space where the ritual and the everyday coexist or with a certain "sense of heaven and earth".

The gable and staircase are the more prominent spatial elements in the building, forming a three-dimensional circulation path from the outside to the inside of the building. The gable, which is the leading space of the building, adapts to the local hot and rainy summer climate while enhancing the building's openness and public participation. Meanwhile, the staircase not only carries the vertical traffic function but also serves as a spatial element and a graphical language implanted in the architectural space.

Cultural Service Center and Local Workshops of Ruyi Village / WCY Regional Studio - Interior Photography, Column — hall and patio. Image © Sheng Ouyang

The flat roof of the building serves as a public drying platform for the local villagers, a public activity space for the villagers, and a viewing platform in the building. The roof, as the top space of the building, has the natural property of opening to the mountain view and the sky and is more pure and open compared to other spaces.

Perhaps because the strategy adopted in the design is relatively simple and pure, the project has been generally accepted by the local government leaders and villagers after completion. The designer chose to keep the building in line with the local villagers' self-built houses, i.e. using local low-cost materials such as red bricks, cement blocks, and concrete, which are commonly found in the area. Meanwhile, by extracting some of the original elements of the local traditional houses and translating them, the designers try to construct a different kind of space and make the local villagers feel some kind of "familiarity" when they are in "strange" or "alien" places.