Invited by Sandu county government and local rural foundation, we are asked to design for a theater capable of housing an audience size of 300 while retaining multifunctional capability. The incentive behind the project remains to be creating a more fitting setting for traditional theater performances in the region to be held in: a setting against the backdrop of nature, one that’s more true to the origin of the many traditional theater pieces. Hence the site is selected to be in the middle of a rice field. The theater will also serve as a communal gathering place when no official events are held.

Due to the unique site given, we decided to use the contours of the field as the foundation and stray away from a cartesian framework of thinking. Songmu theater considers local materials, constraints and information important parts of the realization of a space which, while being a work of abstraction, remains true to locality. Programmatical and experimental freedom are also expressed in the scattered, seemingly randomized network of vertically erected bamboo culms, which is the structural system of the building.