Written by: Saram Maqbool
Posted on: December 19, 2025 | 
| 中文
Bamboo Pavilion
In a world where architecture seems to lunge toward novelty or spectacle more often than not, seeing work that moves in the opposite direction isn’t usual. There are, however, architects who aim to reawaken spaces that have been overlooked. Xu Tiantian is one such architect. Known for her belief that design can heal and reconnect forgotten spaces, she treats landscapes, villages, and communities not as blank canvases but as living archives, full of traces that can guide the creation of new meaning. It is this sensitivity that defines her philosophy and has placed her at the forefront of rural revitalization in China.
Founder of DnA_Design and Architecture, Xu Tiantian is best known for her transformative work in Zhejiang’s Songyang County, where she was invited to help revive dozens of villages facing economic decline, population loss, and cultural erosion. What she produced there is not a collection of flashy stand-alone buildings, but an interconnected constellation of interventions, such as bridges, teahouses, cultural centers, bamboo workshops, tofu factories, sugar mills, each small in scale but enormous in cumulative impact. Rather than importing a singular aesthetic, she allowed each project to emerge from the specific rhythms of local craft, landscape and social life. The result has been described as “architectural acupuncture”: a series of precise, thoughtful insertions that reinvigorate the body of the rural world without overwhelming it.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of this philosophy is the Bamboo Theatre in Huangyu Village. Instead of pushing for a fully constructed building, Xu worked with local craftspeople to weave a large bamboo canopy over an existing clearing used for opera performances. The structure feels both permanent and transitory, anchored in the local landscape, yet infused with the airiness of a woven basket. Sunlight filters through the slits, creating a gentle play of shadow across the ground. This is an example of how architecture can be used to amplify the inherent identity of a place rather than impose new functions.
This sense of working with, rather than against, the grain of a place also guides her Brown Sugar Factory project, which revitalized an old factory used for traditional sugar production. Instead of treating the site as industrial waste, Xu preserved the old furnaces and drying racks, and wrapped new structures around them. The result is a hybrid of a factory, a museum, and a community hub that people from surrounding villages started visiting again for gathering. The building, therefore, does not rely fully on newness but also on continuity, becoming a case study for how new spatial possibilities can be generated while maintaining the narrative of the place instant.
Underlying this work is Xu Tiantian’s belief that architecture is fundamentally relational. A building does not exist in isolation but rather in conversation with its site, its users, and its cultural lineage. Unlike many architects whose contemporary work speaks in a universal vocabulary of glass and steel, Xu builds a local language, project by project. Her interventions are small because they are specific. Her strategies are minimal because they are targeted. She allows context to lead, and she listens for what a place already wants to be instead of dictating what it should or could be.
Her projects also reflect a nuanced understanding of materials. She uses them not only as decorative choices but also as carriers of memory and cultural technique. She often employs wood, bamboo, rammed earth, stone, or brick in ways that maintain the integrity of local construction methods. Yet she pairs these with subtly modern interventions like steel beams that disappear behind timber rafters, glass that frames instead of dominates, and concrete that grounds rather than overwhelms. Her architecture mediates between what can be learned from tradition and what can be offered by contemporary practice, creating a balance that is often missing in new developments.
This material intelligence is matched by spatial clarity. In the Rice Wine Factory transformation, she reorganizes the circulation around existing fermentation pits, introducing new viewing pathways that turn the building into both a productive facility and an educational experience. Visitors walk above sunken vats, catching scent and steam, observing processes once hidden. Here, architecture becomes interpretation, bringing cultural practices embedded in rural life to the forefront.
The cumulative effect of Xu’s work in Songyang is not just architectural but also socio-economic. Villages that were once drifting toward abandonment have been reincarnated. Tourism has revived through authentic experiences instead of commercialization. Visitors come to see how rural craft, architecture, and landscape coexist. Communities have new spaces for gathering, and young people return to their homes since the built environment now supports meaningful activities. Xu Tiantian’s architecture, therefore, operates on material, spatial, cultural, and economic scales simultaneously, without preferring one over the other.
Her design philosophy is ultimately anchored in a belief that architecture can be a tool for rebalancing between urban and rural, preservation and innovation, and community and environment. She treats the village as a complex ecosystem in which even the smallest intervention can create ripples. This philosophy stands in stark contrast to large-scale rural urbanization schemes that erase vernacular life in favor of uniform housing blocks. Xu’s work shows that modernity does not require replacement, but that it can emerge from reinterpretation.
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