Space Type | Cultural Auditorium

Design Firm | PINWU Design

Renovation Year | 2018

Dongwu Auditorium in Qingshan Village was once the village's most prominent building. Constructed in the 1970s by the village's first chief and young villagers, it was built with a simple wooden frame and rammed-earth structure. After more than 40 years, the auditorium fell into disrepair: tiles came off, the roof leaked, and it was left almost in ruins.

In 2017, during his residency in Qingshan Village, Zhang Lei, founder of PINWU, passed by the auditorium every day. One day he climbed inside and fell in love with it at first sight, saying: "We have found a hometown for our souls."

For the restoration, the team invited Jiang Weilong, an elderly carpenter who had helped build the auditorium nearly 50 years earlier. He worked without measuring tools, leaving the beams and columns gently curved. Zhang Lei was deeply drawn to these flowing lines and amazed by the craftsmen's wisdom. To the industrial designer, curvature offers greater structural strength, and mechanics is aesthetics itself. After ten months of restoration, the auditorium became the new home of Rong Design Library.

The original beams, curved lines, and traces of handcraftsmanship were carefully preserved. Rather than adopting an overly distinctive spatial language, the project revives traditional materials and techniques, closely linking villagers' lifestyles with the architecture and allowing visitors to focus on the aesthetic and cultural depth of the library's collection. Using local materials, making the most of what is available, and staying authentic and unpretentious—this natural philosophy is the root of Chinese design embraced by PINWU and Rong Design Library.

In 2018, Zhang Lei and his team of more than 30 designers officially moved PINWU to Qingshan Village, and Rong Design Library settled into Dongwu Auditorium.