Bihailou Art Village is a 6,500-square-meter mixed-use cultural complex under construction in Shatoujiao, Shenzhen. Organized as a seven-level stack of differently scaled volumes, it combines a theatre, museum, retail, food and beverage spaces, and publicly accessible circulation into a vertical extension of the surrounding plaza.
Bihailou Art Village Technical Information
- ArchitectsMVRDV
- LocationShatoujiao, Shenzhen, China
- Gross Area6,500 m2 | 69,965 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years2023 – Present
- Photographs© MVRDV
The joy of this design lies in its contradictions. It looks complex, but the idea of one space for every function is really quite simple.
– Winy Maas
Vertical Village as an Alternative to the Retail Box
Bihailou Art Village applies the Vertical Village research developed by MVRDV and The Why Factory to a cultural-commercial building rather than housing. Instead of enclosing its programme within a single deep-plan retail volume, the proposal distributes functions among a cluster of discrete boxes. The resulting mass is compact but visibly discontinuous: a theatre, museum, restaurants, shops, lobby spaces, and service areas are read as separate architectural episodes rather than departments within a uniform envelope.
This division is not merely compositional. Each volume is proportioned according to its use. Smaller blocks accommodate retail and food spaces, while the theatre takes the form of a larger double-height enclosure with retractable seating, allowing it to alternate between performance and exhibition formats. The project therefore makes programmatic difference legible through scale, façade treatment, and volume. Against Shenzhen’s prevalent model of large, internally organized commercial development, the scheme proposes density as an accumulation of recognizable rooms and addresses.
Reassembling the Character of Shatoujiao
The building does not attempt a literal reconstruction of Shatoujiao’s village fabric. Its design method is closer to abstraction and compilation. Local building types are translated into a catalog of small shops, halls, cylindrical rooms, gabled houses, display boxes, and larger communal interiors. The pitched-roof form embedded in the upper stack refers to the massing of the former Bihailou restaurant, preserving a fragment of the site’s memory without turning it into a historic replica.
Color and material are similarly used as associative devices. Tile, ribbed cladding, brick-toned surfaces, glazed panels, rendered curved forms, and timber-toned elements distinguish individual blocks while recalling the visual heterogeneity of nearby low-rise construction. This diversity is set against the more repetitive residential towers surrounding the plaza. In that context, the irregular silhouette mediates between the civic scale of the open ground and the larger skyline, using fragmentation to retain an identifiable human scale.
Circulation as a Vertical Public Realm
Rather than treating circulation as an enclosed mall interior, Bihailou Art Village positions movement as a public framework. The theatre, Fish Lantern Museum, restaurants, and shops have separate entrances and can operate on different schedules. This arrangement reduces dependence on a single opening time or a central retail corridor, allowing portions of the building to remain accessible even when individual programs are closed.
Stairs, escalators, ramps, bridges, terraces, and open corridors create a route from the plaza to the roof. The route passes between the stacked volumes rather than behind them, producing intermittent exposure to air, daylight, and views. Gaps in the composition frame the surrounding mountains, urban fabric, and bay, while the terraces offer elevated places to pause rather than simply serving as access landings. The building is thus conceived as a vertical sequence of streets and small squares, with circulation carrying as much civic significance as the enclosed rooms it connects.
Cantilevers, Climate Shelter, and Programmatic Flexibility
The shifted stack produces deep overhangs at the ground level, where shaded passages extend the usable area of the plaza. In Shenzhen’s hot and rainy climate, this spatial consequence is more consequential than the visual drama of the cantilevers. Covered thresholds allow movement, waiting, informal gathering, and retail frontage to continue under shelter, while planting and paved public space can flow beneath the suspended volumes.
Concept diagrams indicate a structural system organized around a core framework, columns, beams, and substantial trusses that support the offset boxes. This concealed structural discipline permits the architecture to maintain the appearance of independently placed houses while accommodating large spans and projecting volumes. At night, glazing and differentiated materials reinforce the separateness of the programs: one volume may reveal theatre activity, another a restaurant or shop, while adjacent spaces remain dark. The building’s identity consequently changes with its occupation, rather than relying on a continuous illuminated façade.
About MVRDV
MVRDV is a Rotterdam-based architecture and urbanism practice founded in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, and Nathalie de Vries. Its approach combines architecture, urbanism, and research, including the Vertical Village concept developed with The Why Factory as a model for combining village individuality and community with urban density.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Structural engineers: Shenzhen Qiandian Building Structure Design Office Co., Ltd. (concept design)
- Landscape designers: Guangzhou Turen Landscape Consultants Co., Ltd.
- Client: Shenzhen Shatoujiao Commercial Foreign Trade Co., Ltd.
- Construction company: Shenzhen City Construction (Group) Co., Ltd.
- Project coordination: Wancheng Urban Design & Research (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. and Guangzhou Ruihua Architectural Design Institute Co., Ltd. Shenzhen Branch;
- Construction drawing: Guangzhou Ruihua Architectural Design Institute Co., Ltd. Shenzhen Branch;
- Facade consultant: Shenzhen Longcheng Curtain Wall Design & Consulting Co., Ltd.;
- Lighting consultant: Shenzhen Guangchengshi Technology Co., Ltd.;
- Cost calculation: Shenzhen Dongsen Engineering Project Management Co., Ltd.
- Visualizations: Antonio Luca Coco, Lorenzo D’Alessandro, Angelo La Delfa, and Stefano Fiaschi.
- Research references or publications: Vertical Village, developed by The Why Factory and MVRDV in 2011 and published as a book in 2012.
