Each ring road of Beijing is a rough division of social class. The invisible wall made up of power and wealth divides Beijing into pieces of fixed territories, some of which are inaccessible for majority of people in their whole life. Each territory has a stable hierarchical structure and complicated codes. Design is the way to overcome the obstacles and crack the code.
Designed by Robot 3 Studio
Designers: PAN Fei & WANG Zhi
Photography by Xi-Xun Deng
Huoying is located in the “margin” of Beijing. As the reference of it, Sanlitun area is the center of fashion and exchange of information in Beijing. It takes 1.5 hours to drive from Huoying to Sanlitun with the distance of 25 km. But we believe that the margin of Huoying correlates with the center of Sanlitun. There will be no center if there is no margin. We are designing a wormhole in this spacetime to make the margin and the center overlapped. The wormhole is the Metal Hut.
The psychological change from our work to life could not be instantly changed like a switch. We may still continue to work after returning home. Therefore, we take the Metal Hut as a psychological switch. Squatting is a basic human instinct position on a picnic. This “informal” dining posture is relaxing and getting the diners more intimate. Squatting view also permits the diners to see the usually-neglected low dimension of the world.
Material is just a word, with no special preference. We have chosen a few uncommon materials, with “iron board” as subject, “soft curtains” as attributive, and “a real tree” as the main verb. Metaphorically, it means soft metal is the power to guard our nature.
