Mutang Bar

Jiangxi, China - Renovation

In China, urban spaces expand and refresh rapidly along with economy growth. On the other hand, a lot of small historical villages are gradually forgotten and dying, though they are precious for culture preservation.

Mutang, in the Southern Jiangxi, is one of the dying villages. Buildings, built with wood and ram earth adobe, have stood here for hundreds of years, but are lack of maintenance because of emigration. In the near future, the village would only exist in memory. To stop the tragedy, local government planned to renew the village as a tourist base with history meaning to help it thrive. They carried out a series of renovation of houses and landscape to enrich function of village and provide more jobs for the local. A list of well-known architect studios were invited to design and realize the future of Mutang.

Mutang Bar located at the center of the village. In front of the house is the Mutang, which means pond of wood in Chinese. The owner of the house was the chief of village, and who had experienced cruel war and the struggling post-war period with his house. After decades, the village recovered with the efforts of villagers. And now, the village is stepping into a new age. “This is the moment of Mutang,” the chief said during our first visit.

The old house was composed with a central main hall and two side halls.We defined these three rooms as Room of Darkness, Starlight and Hope. Then, we transformed the experiences of war and recovery into a sequence of space winding through Mutang Bar. Steel plates with black fluorocarbon coating are used to form the linear circulation, which also works as structure replacing rotten wood beams.

Room of Darkness

A giant irregular steel box grows in the room of darkness. Surfaces of the box compressed and redefined the room space. Under the box is an oppressive and dark space. Through a steep staircase, people can explore the steel cavity. Like a phototactic organism, quadrangular-pyramid-shape tentacles of the box stretch through the openings on the walls and roof. Sunlight shines through tentacles and carves a track of time on the cold dark surface of the box.

Room of Starlight

Through one of the tentacles, people can step on a floating corridor in the main hall. From the corridor, a double height space can be seen. The second floor of old house was removed for a larger and brighter room contrary to the Room of Darkness. Some roof tiles were replaced with glass tiles so the roof looks just like starry sky, and on sunny days, sunbeams stream through the room. In the middle of the room is a semi-subterranean sitting area where friends can sit in a circle and enjoy their drinks.

Room of Hope

At the end of the route is the stage of light. When we restored the windows of the room, we put installations made of triangular prism in the window frames. Colorful light refracted through the prisms illuminate the rough ram earth wall. The Room of Hope keeps changing its appearance as time goes by.

Triangular prism installation in the window frames refract colorful light on wall, floor and furniture. It is easy to disassemble for maintenance.