The Moon Pavilion, designed by Atelier Guo and completed in 2025, represents a thoughtful architectural interpretation of ancient Chinese poetry in Huizhou, China. The 120-square-meter pavilion was conceived as a response to classical Chinese verse depicting a poet intoxicated and smiling amid a field of flowers, transforming literary imagery into built form through abstract spatial and figurative motifs.
Rather than creating a literal translation of the poetic imagery, the design team led by architect Guo Liaohui used an abandoned greenhouse as their conceptual starting point. The architects layered abstractions and recombinations of four key elements - water, moon, flower, and boat - onto the existing structure to create a multi-layered architectural narrative that speaks to both contemporary needs and historical memory.
The concept of the "moon" serves as the central organizing principle, directly tied to the literary tradition of "drinking and composing poetry." This idea manifests as a rotatable art installation on one facade of the pavilion, functioning as a medium that connects different perceptual scales. At a distance, both the artificial moon of the installation and the real moon are reflected in the surrounding pond, while visitors walking along the water's edge experience the pavilion's silhouette as reminiscent of the moon rising over the horizon.
The greenhouse heritage proved crucial to the design approach, with the team making a deliberate decision to preserve the structural, spatial, and material language of the original agricultural building. The lightweight pin-jointed structure carried the distinctive character of temporary, makeshift construction typical of agricultural buildings. Its original configuration featured a flat upper layer and an arched middle layer, clad in polycarbonate panels shaded by black netting, which created distinctive semi-transparent interior qualities that the new pavilion reinterprets.
The boat metaphor emerges through the pavilion's structural organization, expanding the greenhouse's single-story footprint into two levels while opening views toward a distant water reservoir and freeing ground-level space for visitors. The second-floor concrete slab functions like a raised ground plane, a solution inspired by the temporary supports used to lift boats above water during dry seasons. This slab is supported by dense, seemingly irregular steel columns that cleverly conceal water and electrical services throughout the structure.
The shallow V-shaped slab of the first floor reinforces the impression of a boat's hull, creating a striking visual and conceptual contrast with the lightweight roof structure above. By raising the roof truss higher than the original greenhouse, the new structure achieved improved lateral stability while strengthening the nautical allusion that runs throughout the design.
The landscape strategy transforms the pavilion into what the architects call a "Green Island," dissolving the sharp indoor-outdoor boundary typical of greenhouse structures. Although the physical structure of the original greenhouse was not preserved, its essential function of cultivating flowers continues in the new design. Plants spill naturally from the pavilion into the surrounding landscape, creating a gradient that moves from shade-tolerant species beneath the concrete slab to existing vegetation beyond, forming a loose, living edge that softens the geometric precision of the architectural volume.
To evoke the atmosphere of the original greenhouse while responding to the site's agricultural context, the pavilion is clad in dark polycarbonate panels that make the building appear from a distance like a pair of "sunglasses." This dark skin serves multiple purposes: it accentuates the brightness of the moon installation during daylight hours while providing the building with literal transparency that makes its structural layers clearly readable to visitors and passersby.
The structural system employs a color-coding strategy where steel members are distinguished by different colors, clarifying the hierarchy of the frame and reinforcing the overall expression of transparency that defines the pavilion's character. However, the semi-transparency of the cladding created significant thermal challenges that required integrated solutions including passive ventilation, strategic shading, and mechanical mist fans.
Working with sustainability consultants from Atelier Li Yin, the design team used simulation and calculation to ensure the pavilion achieves environmental balance with its outdoor surroundings. The building relies primarily on natural air movement to ensure visitor comfort, representing a sustainable approach that honors both the agricultural heritage of the site and contemporary environmental concerns.
The project involved collaboration with multiple specialists, including structural design by Zhang Zhun & AND Office, with construction handled by Sichuan Jiangren Qingshui Labor Co., Ltd. and Guilin Mingxin Exhibition Co., Ltd. Artists Gao Meilin and Xu Gang contributed to the installation elements, while the client Shanghai Fengyuzhu Culture & Technology Co., Ltd. supported the realization of this unique cultural pavilion that bridges literary tradition and contemporary architectural expression.
