Chinese architecture studio LLLab used woven bamboo to create a canopy and a group of pod-like pavilions to shelter visitors to a light show set amongst the dramatic limestone mountains of Guilin.
Shanghai-based firm LLLab designed the bamboo canopy and pavilions for the site of the Impression Sanjie Liu light show, which takes place at night on the Li River in Yangshuo, China.
Top: LLLab designed the pavilion to look like a mountain range. Above: it is built along a river
The show, directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou and first staged in 2004, uses the river and 12 surrounding karst mountains as the backdrop for a performance of songs and special effects inspired by the legend of folk singer Liu Sanjie.
The island site used for the show already contained an entrance pagoda at one end, with the main stage at the other. LLLab's design is intended to activate the previously underused area between the entrance and the main stage. The site was already largely covered with bamboo groves, so the architects developed a series of interventions that use bamboo as the main building material to complement the natural setting.
LLLab designed bamboo pods for the project
"As a means to coincide with what is already there, the new architecture looked at borrowing the materiality of the bamboo, reconfiguring it to form new space," said LLLab.
"In doing so, this new space means not to contest. Instead it aims to augment, albeit very gently, the surrounding bamboo groves and hill...