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SPARK Architects creates an exciting playground ’’Jianzi Box’’ for Beijing Design Week
China Architecture News - Oct 01, 2015 - 09:42 6797 views
image © SPARK Architects
SPARK Architects designed a colourful installation composed of 15.000 Jianzi units, which land on an empty site in the Baitasi area, a new hub for the Beijing Design Week this year. SPARK Architects used an item that is part of the everyday life of public spaces in the city, “Jianzi” - a traditional game played since the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD). In a Jianzi game, players use their bodies to keep a heavily weighted shuttlecock from reaching the ground. In this sense the “Jianzi” is a small item that calls for social interaction and spontaneous use of public space.
image © SPARK Architects
It can transform a leftover space into an exciting playground during the course of the game. It allows communities to coalesce, strengthening social cohesion, while adding all the health benefits that is required in such a vigorous aerobic exercise. It vitalises many residual spaces throughout Beijing and this is why it is very important for us to materialise this phenomenon into our proposal. SPARK Architects conceives Beijing Design Week as an influential platform to showcase, both nationally and internationally, a little bit of Beijing and its traditional folk expressions.
image © SPARK Architects
SPARK Architects designed a vessel composed of 15.000 Jianzi units that will land on an empty site in the Baitasi area, a new hub for the Beijing Design Week this year. The Jianzi Vessel is designed to invert the Jianzi game with the players, creating an intimate connection with the Jianzi Item and engaging not only in a physical but also in a perceptual and emotional level through people’s senses.
exploded drawing of Jianzi Box, image © SPARK Architects
All the Jianzi units will be will be given away to the visitors so they can make their own public space by getting together and having a good time. This will potentially represent 15.000 Jianzi matches in different parts of the city. In this sense our pavilion is not only located on the place where it sits in Baitasi, but wherever the users decide to take a little piece of it.
construction view from the site, image © SPARK Architects
image © shu he
image © cristiano bianchi
image © cristiano bianchi
image © cristiano bianchi
image © christian taeubert
image © shu he
image © shu he
Project Facts
Organizer: SPARK
Project Director: Jan Felix Clostermann
Designer: Sebastian Loaiza
Date: 9.23-10.7
Address: Sanqingguan Square, South BTS Area, Xicheng District