Text description provided by the architects. Bamboo is a quickly growing grass that is found in every garden in China and as spare woodland in many hilly regions.

The importance of bamboo in Chinese culture arises from a range of qualities such as its flexible structure, the sparkling green lighting effect that a bamboo grove engenders, its many varieties, and its technical properties as a material. For the village of Hengkeng, Xu Tiantian designed a theatre stage that is inspired by a historical account.

Diagram

Courtesy of DnA_Design and Architecture Studio

For the construction of the bamboo dome, the architect used a low-tech approach that takes the rapid growth and bendable quality of the material into account. Once installed, the growing dome requires little regular maintenance: younger bamboo sprouts are woven into the existing dome and old poles are removed.

This bioorganic architecture in natural surroundings facilitates activities ranging from village opera performances to individual meditation in nature.

• Architects

  DnA

• Location

  Hengkengcun, Songyang, Lishui, Zhejiang, China

• Category

  Theaters & Performance

• Lead Architects

  Tiantian Xu

• Client

  Songyang Tourism Development Co., Ltd.

• Project Year

  2015

• Photographs

  Ziling Wang, Dan Han