re-architecture design studio Transforms a Fishing Village Home into a Layered Coastal Pavilion

Fishing villages along China's coast carry a particular kind of architectural DNA: narrow lots, self-built concrete frames, ad hoc extensions that climb upward as families grow. These buildings are pragmatic to their core, shaped by economics and proximity to the water rather than any design ambition. When re-architecture design studio took on the renovation of one such house, the challenge was not demolition and replacement but careful reinterpretation. The result is a building that feels simultaneously rooted in its harbor context and radically open to the landscape around it.

What makes this project worth studying is the disciplined layering of intervention. Rather than imposing a singular formal gesture, the studio worked floor by floor, wrapping the existing structure in a sequence of canopies, glass enclosures, and terraces that progressively open toward the sea. The perforated green metal panels that define the building's identity are not decoration; they control light, provide shade, and give the facade a textile quality that shifts between transparency and opacity depending on the hour. It is a project about negotiation: between old structure and new skin, between enclosure and exposure, between a village street and the open Pacific.

A Street Presence Built from Layers

From the street, the building reads as a stack of glowing horizontal planes. The perforated green canopy panels extend beyond the glass facade, creating a deep threshold between the public lane and the interior. At dusk, integrated lighting turns these layers into a lantern effect, with each floor announcing itself independently. The steel structure is left exposed and painted, giving the facade an honest legibility that avoids the slick minimalism often applied to hospitality renovations in similar contexts.

The entry sequence, marked by simple signage beneath the translucent canopy, manages to feel both welcoming and intriguing. You see through the building before you enter it, catching glimpses of harbor light filtered through multiple layers of glass and metal. It is a facade strategy that earns complexity without resorting to formal acrobatics.

Dining with the Harbor

The lower dining levels are organized around framed views of the harbor. Timber tables, rope railings, and exposed beam ceilings create an atmosphere that borrows from the maritime context without descending into pastiche. The critical move here is the scale of the openings: floor-to-ceiling glass walls dissolve the boundary between the covered dining space and the waterfront, so that a blue fishing boat at dock becomes part of the room's composition.

The timber and steel beam ceiling structure in the main dining hall does real architectural work, spanning the width of the existing frame while providing rhythm and warmth overhead. Two figures standing at the edge of one dining area, silhouetted against distant mountains across the water, give a sense of the spatial generosity that the renovation achieved within a tight footprint.

Perforated Ceilings and Controlled Light

The perforated ceiling panels are arguably the signature element. Overhead, they cast shifting patterns of reflected light across terrazzo tabletops and glass balustrades, turning the act of eating lunch into a minor event of dappled illumination. On cloudy days, the effect softens to a diffuse glow; under direct sun, the perforations produce a precise, almost pixelated shadow play.

On the upper dining level, perforated glass floor panels introduce another dimension: light passes not just downward through the canopy but also vertically through the floor plate, connecting levels visually. Combined with the timber beam ceiling and mountain panorama beyond, these spaces manage to feel expansive despite the modest column grid inherited from the original structure.

Vertical Circulation as Spatial Event

In a narrow self-built house, the stairwell is often an afterthought, a dark concrete shaft connecting floors. Here, re-architecture design studio turned circulation into one of the building's most compelling moments. The multi-level stairwell is lined with white metal mesh railings that allow light to pass freely between floors, and floor-to-ceiling translucent curtains filter daylight into a luminous column at the building's core.

The curved corrugated metal tower, visible from the courtyard and crowned by a decorative swan sculpture, houses part of this vertical sequence. Clad in ribbed panels, it introduces a soft geometry that contrasts with the rectilinear frame of the original house. It is a deliberate punctuation mark, signaling that something other than a typical village renovation is happening here.

Living Rooms Facing the Water

The quieter lounge spaces rely on a simpler palette: dark seating, leather chairs, corrugated metal ceilings, and uninterrupted glass. These rooms are less about architectural spectacle and more about the view itself. Calm waters dotted with fishing boats, palm fronds brushing the edge of the frame, distant headlands fading into haze. The architecture steps back, providing comfort and enclosure while letting the South China Sea do the talking.

Rooftop Terraces and the Tower

The rooftop is the project's release valve. After climbing through increasingly open dining levels, you arrive at a terrace with pedestal tables, integrated strip lighting along white planters, and panoramic views of distant mountains. The curved white seating walls and illuminated circular signage panel give this level a distinct identity, closer to a rooftop bar than a village house.

The cylindrical tower, clad in ribbed panels and glowing softly at twilight, anchors one corner of the terrace composition. Beside it, the perforated green canopy extends one final time, now functioning as a shade device for outdoor seating rather than a facade element. The consistency of this material language, from street level to rooftop, is what gives the project its coherence across four very different programmatic levels.

The Canopy as Terrace Element

Seen from the terrace at dusk, the perforated metal canopy becomes something close to a second sky. The glass balustrade below it disappears visually, so you are left with a floating green plane overhead and the waterfront stretching out in front. An infinity pool glimpsed beyond palm trees on one level suggests that the program here extends well beyond dining, pushing this renovation toward a full hospitality destination layered into a village fabric.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plans reveal the organizational logic that the photographs only hint at. On the first level, reception areas, a dining hall, and multiple kitchens radiate from a central courtyard, confirming that the courtyard is the spatial anchor of the entire scheme. The second floor consolidates dining around a terrace with integrated plantings and the curved stair volume. By the third floor, the plan loosens further into restaurant and bar spaces with generous terraces. The roof plan shows the full ambition: multiple terraces with circular seating arrangements and an oval pool.

The wall section drawing is particularly instructive. Yellow floor lines trace the multi-level construction clearly, and the material assembly details show how the new canopy, glass, and steel systems attach to the existing concrete frame. This is not a ground-up building; it is a careful grafting of a new architectural identity onto an inherited structure, and the section makes the technical negotiation legible.

Why This Project Matters

Across coastal China, self-built village houses are being demolished or abandoned as fishing economies shift. The alternative, renovation into hospitality venues, often results in generic resort aesthetics that erase the character of the original settlement. What re-architecture design studio achieved here is a third path: a transformation that is unmistakably contemporary but that works within the constraints of the existing lot, the village street, and the harbor edge. The building does not pretend to be something it is not. Its steel is exposed, its column grid is inherited, and its primary material, the perforated green canopy, is industrially produced and frankly assembled.

The project also demonstrates that spatial richness does not require a large footprint. By stacking distinct experiences, from enclosed dining to open terraces to a rooftop pool, the studio created a vertical sequence that rewards movement through the building. Each floor offers a different relationship to the water, the sky, and the village. That kind of sectional thinking, driven by view and light rather than program alone, is what elevates this from a competent renovation into a project with genuine lessons for working within existing coastal fabrics.

Coastal House Renovation by re-architecture design studio. Location: coastal fishing village, China. Photographs by Bian Lin.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.