The Napavilion is an intimate yet expansive geometric pavilion designed as an optical device for viewing the rural Lantian landscape. It serves as a small group event space for wine investors and local farmers in the vineyard surrounding a winery. The design of the ruled surfaces of the symmetrical walls, constructed of dimensional lumber, change in angle, density, and pattern, allowing for varied daylight conditions, visual screening, wind baffling, and degrees of enclosure for standing, sitting, or napping. The stepped roof is covered, yet the level floor joists above the ground remain open to below, allowing cool breezes to flow inside and grasses to grow below. Supported by concrete columns recalling the slender concrete trellis posts in the vineyard, the pavilion's wooden structure appears to float in the landscape. Formally, the pavilion’s scale, orientation, proximity to the hillside, and degrees of visual transparency both register and intensify the bucolic site conditions. The Napavilion was realized in a concerted effort between Jade Valley Wine and Resort, The Lantian County government, and the USC American Academy in China, and the project was built by a combination of contemporary digital methods and traditional rural handcraft. Professional builders, local laborers, and graduate students in architecture from the United States and China, both women and men, participated in a multinational, multiethnic effort to construct the project in less than two weeks. The project was first presented and exhibited in Shenzhen in 2017.
Credits:
- Geoffrey von Oeyen Design - Principal - Geoffrey von Oeyen
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