Haitang Pavilion is a compact public waystation within the 13-kilometer Haitang River Ecological Park in Sanya. The project couples rest, exhibition, and cultural programming with a clear spatial reading of the riverine landscape. A hovering roof, a highly transparent glass-rib enclosure, a sky-focused courtyard, and a subterranean ramped sequence together choreograph a measured transition from open parkland to curated interior spaces while maintaining continuity with the site’s slope and 180-degree outlook to the Haitang River.
Haitang Pavilion Technical Information
- Architects: E PLUS DESIGN
- Location: Haitang River Ecological Park, Sanya, Hainan, China
- Gross Area: 899 m2 | 9,677 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2022 – 2023
- Photographs: © Jin Weiqi, © Wu Jianquan
We aim to embrace the existing sloping condition and use the height difference to create meandering paths and varied sightlines, dissolving the building into the environment. The journey from site to internal spaces occurs naturally and effortlessly.
– Wang Zhe
Typology and Ecological Interface
The pavilion operates as a parkway station that mediates between everyday recreation and curated interpretation of the river corridor. Programmatic flexibility allows the building to support rest, small exhibitions, and cultural activities without interrupting the linear park’s flows. Rather than asserting a singular object, the project reads as a calibrated field condition that extends the park’s pathways, views, and environmental gradients into and through the interior.
Topography drives the approach. The site falls from southeast to northwest toward the Haitang River, and the design uses this gradient to choreograph a series of meandering routes with shifting sightlines. The slope partially absorbs the building’s mass, so approach and entry unfold as a sequence of lateral and descending movements that bring the river’s 180-degree panorama into dialogue with the pavilion’s interior sequence.
A perimeter of high transparency reduces visual bulk and maintains continuity across the ecological setting. The glass-rib curtain wall reads as an instrument for seeing rather than a boundary, allowing the park’s vegetation, light, and weather to permeate the edge. The result is an ambiguous limit between park and pavilion that privileges landscape legibility over architectural objecthood.
The Hovering Roof as Landscape Mediator
A continuous canopy, likened to a wind-billowed tapestry, structures the ensemble. A lifted corner marks entry and registers the prevailing movement of visitors. Toward the river, eaves extend to collect views and shade, while the roof tips rest on grassy slopes to shelter footpaths. These inflections align with circulation desire lines and frame moments of prospect toward water and sky.
The roof acts as a third layer of landscape, gathering shade, breeze, and filtered light while remaining visually detached from the enclosure beneath. The apparent separation between canopy and wall emphasizes lightness and foregrounds the surrounding topography as the primary figure. From within, the soffit becomes a continuous horizon that edits the skyline and moderates solar exposure in a humid coastal climate.
Pairing the floating canopy with a glass-rib curtain wall reinforces porosity. The thinness of the glazed envelope and the hovering line of the roof calibrate enclosure without sealing off the park, producing a gradient from exposed paths to covered edges to interior rooms. This layered porosity attunes the pavilion’s thermal and visual comfort to the rhythms of the landscape it inhabits.
Courtyard Threshold and Spatial Calm
A courtyard, loosely evoking begonia petals, forms an atmospheric hinge between the dynamic public realm and the controlled interiors. The space concentrates attention upward to the sky, capturing wind, cloud, and shifting light as part of the experiential sequence. Its plan curvature and enclosing edges temper noise and scale, establishing a pause before entry.
A meandering approach extends the threshold and slows the pace. The path turns the courtyard into a prologue to the exhibition, transitioning visitors from panoramic scenery to an introspective focus. By staging this recalibration outdoors yet within a defined envelope, the design prepares both body and perception for the more controlled conditions of the galleries.
Enclosure, planting, and surface articulation are tuned to create a moderated microclimate. Vegetation softens edges and filters wind; ground textures register the shift from park surface to architectural ground. The courtyard’s proportions balance openness with containment, supporting acoustic and thermal comfort while maintaining visual continuity to the canopy above.
Subterranean Galleries and Ramped Promenade
The main exhibition route is carved from the ground plane. Visitors step onto a reception platform beneath the canopy, then descend along an embedded ramp into progressively taller spaces. Along the descent, sectional reveals offer calibrated glimpses of the river, deferring the full panorama to heighten anticipation and structuring a clear legibility of movement.
A secluded, immersive hall is interposed at the nadir of the sequence. From this compressed, inward-focused room, visitors reemerge along a daylit ascent bordered by rammed earth walls. The material’s tactility and thermal mass, combined with controlled apertures, mark a narrative turn from enclosure toward openness while maintaining a measured progression of light.
The promenade concludes in a bright, transparent hall where the curtain wall restores full dialogue with the park. Here, the loop of compression and release is resolved in a space that alternates refuge with prospect, linking exhibition content to a continuous reading of the river landscape. The circuit establishes a clear didactic structure: approach, pause, descent, immersion, ascent, and reconnection, each articulated through section, material, and light.
About Haitang Pavilion Design Team
Based in China, the Haitang Pavilion design team was established to develop the Haitang River Ecological Park Exhibition Hall in Sanya, with lead design contributions beginning in 2022. The approach integrates architecture into topography and ecological context, embracing terrain variations, natural light, and landscape views to create spaces rooted in fluid spatial transitions and environmental integration.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: China Resources Group
- Architects: Wang Zhe, Tian Xin
- Landscape designers: AECOM
- Interior Design: WATERFROM Design
- Photographs: Jin Weiqi, Wu Jianquan
- Video Production: Archi-Translator Photography
