Fishermen Light Cinema - Renovation of Dongmen Pier / TheY Architects

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The project is located at Dongmen Pier on South Yugang Road in Shipu Town, Xiangshan County, Ningbo City, China. The renovation, in a light-touch manner, preserves the main steel structure of the original passage building. It retains the passage function while adding a second-floor visitor rest area and extending a viewing and meditation space facing the fishing port dock. A single-flight staircase on the north side of the passage leads to the second floor, ensuring enough width of the passage way.For the "Fishermen Light Cinema," renovation doesn't mean erasing the old times but rather embracing the site and achieving symbiosis with it. The true symbiosis perhaps lies in permitting different orders to grow and collide within the building. The "Fishermen Light Cinema" sets up a narrative stage for these spontaneous events, enabling them to perform an ever - lasting improvisational drama amidst the interplay of light and shadow."Fishermen Light Cinema" is not merely a rest stop for weary travelers, but a theater that encapsulates life itself. Whether fleeting visitors or locals living and working here, everyone becomes a silhouette in this seaside cinema, enacting the simplicity and authenticity of life on the pier. Shipu Town is known as the "City of Fishermen Light." The term "Fishermen Light" is the symbol of Shipu. It represents the flickering lights on fishing boats since ancient times, as well as the poignant era of fishermen's joys and sorrows captured in the 1934 film "Song of the Fishermen", directed by Chusheng Cai and filmed in Shipu. Over time, Xiangshan is now composing a new chapter of a beautiful life under the theme of Fishermen's Light in the New Era, and the name "Shipu" has become synonymous with the prosperous life of fishermen today.The facade renovation draws inspiration from the shimmering sea wave, the traditional fishing lanterns, and fishing nets, creating a texture unique to coastal fishing villages. The facade is composed of polycarbonate panels with different light transmittance from 35%, 67% to transparent. From bottom to top, it gradually becomes more transparent and the texture becomes denser, creating a semi - transparent effect. The polycarbonate panels with different level of transparency blur the activities of people inside, making the facade resemble a screen that reflects people's movement tracks inside.The second floor is composed of a rest area near the South Yugang Road and a meditation space facing the pier. From the meditation space that extends beyond the roof, one can take in views of the dock, boats, and Dongmen Island across the sea. In addition to tourists, boatmen and pierworkers who live and work here often come up to the meditation space. They pause and sit quietly, contemplating the pier they once knew so well from a new perspective.