Air Mountain - OCT Phoenix Flower Carnival Multi-Purpose Pavilion 2019

Air Mountain is a multi-function event pavilion built for the fourth OCT Phoenix Flower Carnival in Shenzhen in 2019, commissioned by Shenzhen Qiyi De Fruit Culture and OCT Overseas Chinese Town Group and manufactured by Guangzhou Hongwan Inflatable Model. During the two-week carnival, the interior hosts concerts, theatre, forums and workshops, while the multi-dimensional exterior is itself a public leisure terrain where visitors freely climb, sit, lie, stand or recline on its surfaces. Air Mountain is both a composite building and a natural topography open to imagination and movement. Its design thinking rests on two cores: micro-ecological geometry and multi-dimensional relationships and phenomena. The geometry evolves from basic form into final shape in response to environmental and event needs: an air layer becomes the structural and insulation system, the inner ceiling is an anticlastic surface that avoids sound focusing, top vents channel hot air out, and side openings drive cross-ventilation. The evolution of form is an ecological-coordination concept. Multi-dimensional relationship means fusion and penetration: the building is not a fixed single-function object but a co-temporal result of many elements and functions, a fusion of architecture with landscape, of different activities and states, and of the artificial with the natural. Multi-dimensional phenomenon treats the building as an ecological event, because the number of things occurring simultaneously in everyday reality is incalculable. Beyond utility, Air Mountain asks whether a static building can present dynamic relationships and rise to an environmental result layered from co-temporal phenomena. Through horizontal and vertical spatial relations and the building's transparency, different contents and behaviours are drawn into a shared perspective, producing a layered visual relation of landscape and event, opening the possibility of a new relationship between architecture and nature. The lead architect is Huang Zelin.