The beauty of chance

Impression Sanjie Liu in Yizhou

IILab.

Liu Sanjie

Liu Sanjie was a simple girl and a very talented singer who fought with autho­ri­ties almost 1,000 years ago. On the run, she and her lover turned into larches, which allowed them to stay toge­ther forever. So much for the legend.

Liu Sanjie’s story has been performed since 2004 with more than 600 perfor­mers in the incre­dible nature of the southern Chinese city of Yizhou. The spec­tacle is called “Impres­sion Sanjie Liu” and is quite rightly enorm­ously successful. The 10,000 spec­tator natural stage is considered the largest in the world.

Now, it has been upgraded.

Landsape

The Impres­sion Sanjie Liu, Yangshuo, Guilin is located in one of the most dramatic land­scapes in China. Endless gree­nery surrounds the site filling space between large karst towers of rock. With a land­scape so grand any moves to dismiss it, let alone compete would make little sense. With this under­stan­ding it was decided that the natural elements them­selves would form the premise for what archi­tec­ture would inhabit the site, one element in parti­cular, bamboo.
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Plot

The Impres­sion Sanjie Liu is already well estab­lished, now in its 15th year of opera­tion. Curr­ently, the night show enter­tains guests in two areas, one at either end of the island site. The entry and pagoda where guests arrive, and the main stage, perched at the bank of the Li river at the other end.

Between these two points little inter­ac­tion takes place. IILab. have changed this in a wonderful way.

Structure

The first, woven bamboo lantern struc­tures, scat­tered where guests circu­late, whose purpose is to guide and intrigue. Then the other, a stretch of woven canopy amongst clus­ters of bamboo, provi­ding area to walk shel­tered from regular rain­fall.

When ente­ring the site, lanterns small in stature line along the pathway cast out signals of dappled light. As visi­tors travel further the once small lanterns become drasti­cally larger to a point where the guests can find them­selves able to walk inside. The makeup of the lanterns remains sincere, with a struc­ture of bamboo lengths encased in lashed bamboo either side.

The beauty of coincidence

On closer inspec­tion one can get a sense of the random beauty that can only be created when some­thing is truly cons­tructed by hand.

The slightly dark appearance of bamboo framing shows markings of how it is bowed with fire to create the curved lantern silhou­ette. Over this, piece by piece, teams of local craft­sman have threaded nume­rous stripes of bamboo in an unin­ten­tional pattern that requires no glues or nails to hold its shape.

This method of produc­tion is a show­case of intri­cacy, clearly shaped by the hands of people and their intui­tion of beauty.

Lanterns

In the daylight, the lanterns appear solid, the yellow of the shell in compli­ment with the green surroun­ding. Come night the perso­na­lity of the lantern shifts from some­thing more unyiel­ding to a porous shell.

Supported by the columns in a maze of tubes, the struc­ture of the canopy while seen doesn’t look out of place. The hand-woven layer obscures what is in front and what lays behind. Stret­ching 140m from where you stand the woven ceiling takes on a shape of an inverted land­scape, undu­la­ting between diffe­rent levels of surfaces.

Moments of performance

In acknow­ledgment to the thea­trical spirit of the Impres­sion Sanjie Liu, moments of perfor­mance make its way into many parts of the design: The hand weaving, bamboo playing off the tension of one another.

The topo­graphy of the canopy ceiling dancing between columns of bamboo as if unsup­ported. Even the way guests are intended to move from lantern to lantern, in a narra­tive of inter­ac­tion. Toge­ther these subtle hints encou­rage a parti­cular frame of mind, readying the guest for the main feature.

Drama, baby.

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We did this.

Project data

Architect

llLab.

Hanxiao Liu, Henry D’Ath, Lexian Hu, Alyssa Tang, Chaoran Fan, Luis Ricardo, David Correa

Client

Impres­sion Sanjie Liu

Team

Project Manage­ment Team:
GCPS Inte­rior Deco­ra­tion Finis­hing Ltd.
Lihua Mi, Dalin Chai, Hao Zhang, Guoyang Wan

Project Cons­truc­tion Team:
Ying­hong Shao, Yanru Dong, Ying­ming Shao

Struc­tural Design:
LaLu Part­ners Struc­ture Consul­ting

Address

Pantao Rd, Yangshuo County
Guilin, Guangxi
China

Opening

2020

Photos

Arch-Exist Photo­graphy

Author

IILab.

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