Images: Daipu Architects
The need for mass, fast production to keep up with China’s rapid urbanisation and construction in the past two decades have given birth to a lackluster landscape of gaudy structures, and sometimes shoddy jobs that threaten human health and safety.
Daipu Architects seeks to buck this trend, experimenting with more prototype-driven solutions to generate new building and structural systems. Their series of renovation projects is dubbed “Anti-Domino” as a counter “to simple replications of the Domino system in the horizontal dimension and repeated compositions of such system in the vertical dimension.”
2 Cups Bar in Chongqing, China was one of the architects’ first projects. The Anti-domino No. 02 Project is the first completed one from this series. The owner wanted all beer lovers to enjoy a tipple outdoors while observing the unique skyline of the Yuzhong peninsula.
To differentiate the bar, the design team introduced a “mountainous terrain” into the restricted concrete space. The whole model is made of pure solid wood and carved by computerised digital control machines. The model is designed on computer, then prefabricated in the factory and assembled on site, which technique improves the completeness of the model and also saves the time of on-site work.
This installation can be seen as topography, landscape or furniture design. It includes the guide of sight line at the entrance, spatial partitions, footrests of bar counter, small articles for fiddling with while drinking, and a large wooden sofa.
Outdoor seating
The solid wood will expand or contract depending on the temperature and varied wood grains will emerge on the surface. After a few years, the wood will wear from the expansion and contraction of the weather as well as from customers’ prolonged use, giving the pub a rugged, weathered feel.
