kazuyo sejima’s floating design center appears like a sophisticated dome-enclosed island in china

Kazuyo Sejima designs new design center in Puyuan, China

Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima of the renowned firm SANAA has unveiled renderings of a new design & events center for the city of Puyuan in China. The design, which is set on a small island within the river of the town, does not include a building on the site but instead proposes to enclose the entire island with a glass dome. The result is a complex ‘architectural’ landscape in which the boundaries between the built and natural environment are blurred.

a ship-like structure floating in the river

The Puyuan Design and Event Center concept by Kazuyo Sejima (find more here) involves covering the entire island with glass, including an existing temple that sits on the site. With a length of 150 meters and a height of 30 meters, the resulting design and event center looks like a ship floating in the river.

Challenging the notion of scale, and the separation between architecture and its environment, the structure incorporates a large-scale dome that lacks large structural beams or columns. The entire roof is a rigid mesh of stainless steel tubes with an average diameter of no more than 30 mm that human hands can assemble. The result is less of a building, and more of an environment in which the built structure is interwoven with the river, the trees, and the sky.

project info: 

name: Puyuan Design and Event Center 
architects: Kazuyo Sejima & Associates
location: Puyuan, China