The Paper's reporter Wang Yi
In the 5th Pingyao International Film Festival in 2021, the word "ju" is the head. Since the opening of the Pingyao Film Palace in the ancient city of Pingyao in Jinzhong, Shanxi on October 12, whether it is directors Xu Ke and Jia Zhangke, sitting in the "Platform" amphitheatre with a capacity of 1,500 people on the west side of the Film Palace, laughing about Hitchcock's "unexpected classic" "Telephone Murder"; or the 84-year-old fourth-generation director Ding Yinnan, in the "Spring of a Small Town" indoor cinema hall that can accommodate 500 people in the east of the Film Palace, he was awarded the "Fifth Anniversary Special Award" - this film palace with factory heritage and exquisite layout. Become a common activity field for filmmakers from all over the world to "get together" to watch movies, chat about movies, comment on movies, and love movies.
"Spring in a Small Town". The images in this article were provided by the interviewees themselves.
On the eve of this year's 11th National Day holiday, the Pingyao Film Palace, the venue of the Pingyao International Film Festival, won the first prize in the historical architecture category of the 2020 Architectural Society of China Design Award. Previously, pingyao film palace has won a number of architectural awards at home and abroad. Awards include the 2016-2018 WA China Architecture Awards Urban Contribution Award, the 2019 Hong Kong Institute of Architects Cross-Strait Four-Land Architectural Design Awards Excellence Award, the 2020 ArchitectA+ Awards nominations, the Architecture+Renovation - Finalist Finalist Award, and the 2020 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Conservation Awards Excellence Award.
The Architectural Society of China Architectural Design Award, one of the highest honors in the field of architectural design in China sponsored by the Architectural Society of China, "aims to reward public building projects with excellent overall quality, with the original intention of exploring the current architectural history research and historical building protection, and commending architects who pursue continuous innovation and research in the field of architecture.". It is understood that in terms of award setting, the first prize winner should reach the international advanced level or the domestic leading level, "the relevant professional and special technologies should be innovative, applicable and economical, and achieve good social benefits, economic benefits and ecological and environmental benefits". The award, from the announcement of the list of winners to the end of the final announcement, lasted five months, which shows its seriousness and authority.
Bird's eye view of Pingyao Film Palace
Designed by the team of Lian Yirui of the Industrial Park Research Center of the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University, the Pingyao Film Palace was transformed by taking the pingyao international film exhibition as an opportunity to select the abandoned industrial land in the ancient city of Pingyao - Pingyao Diesel Engine Factory. Speaking of which, as a well-known architectural designer in China, Pingyao Film Palace is only one of the projects that Lian Yirui has been working on in recent years. In addition, in the urban landscape planning, industrial heritage transformation, especially rural transformation and other fields, he also made extraordinary efforts.
In an exclusive interview with the surging news reporter, Lian Yirui said that although Pingyao County only has a population of 530,000, only the Pingyao International Film Festival has a fixed venue among China's major film festivals. In the design process of the Pingyao Film Palace, because it is designed in a world cultural heritage site, every step of the plan is cautious, "architectural design with its restrained planning and familiar with the unfamiliar breakthrough thinking, the skill is cleverly dissolved under the image of typology, not eye-catching but with a long poetry." He said.
"We are used to using one or two adjectives to describe buildings, and we like to be able to describe them in the most vivid words, they are all prominent, clearly iconic, highly recognizable, and can be found immediately when thrown in a pile of people." It is the dragon and phoenix in the city, the leader in the street. And the movie palace brings me a lot of other feelings, I hope to be able to make a difficult to use a quick one or two adjectives to describe, a feature of vague and diverse, simple and gentle form, thrown in the pile of people may not be visible. However, everything has an adjective, and if I had to give it an adjective, I would like it to be an adjective. The 'face' of this man's true face. Lian Yirui said. As a Shanxi person who loves noodles, he really can't do without "noodles" in three sentences. The following is presented in his oral form.
Lian Yirui
【Lian Yirui Dictation】
From "Factory" to "Cinema Palace"
Pingyao Diesel Engine Factory has a history of decades, and it used to be a production plant in the ancient city. With the upgrading of the industry, it has been vacant for more than a decade. The factory building is vacated one after another, and there is no particularly clear time point, but from the abandonment to the present, there are more than ten years. The factory area has not done much planning before, and the exhibition held here before is done in the single plant, which is called "single use" in the industry.
We call such factory areas industrial heritage. The word "relic" has two meanings, one is that its original function has disappeared, and the other is that it still exists, and the public and society cannot ignore it. In the ancient city of Pingyao, there is such a large number of factories whose functions have disappeared, which is actually a very valuable asset. Its physical existence, if it really involves property rights issues or demolition problems, will be a long process, so it is transformed into its use, which is currently the most convenient orientation.
The factory building before the renovation
We call such a transformation "update": First, the function should be updated, its original function is no longer there, if you just want to do a binary opposition, do not emphasize the interactive exhibition, then do a single use, in the internal set can be. But if you want to give it a richer feature, as seen by today's guests, with a wide variety of interactions, you need to update the overall look.
In 2017 ("In Pingyao, People Who Love Movies "Appreciate Each Other"), that is, before the "First Year of Pingyao", when it came to the idea of combining the new film festival culture with this historic ancient city, director Jia Zhangke and the organizing committee deliberated and selected the site carefully, and finally decided to be here (organized).
When I first started doing it, there were not many problems. As I said, the original factory building was just a single body, and its function was far from the venue of the real film festival. Our first actual survey was planned in 2016. At the beginning of that year, the plan was already being discussed, and in the process of discussion, many ways were proposed, and in the end, the director gave us great help.
"Pingyao Year Zero"
As an architectural design institute, I do not know the place and space of the film festival. Director Jia Zhangke gave us a "popular science", he has a wealth of experience in participating in film festivals, not as an audience, watching things in front of the stage. He has been a guest and jury member of many film festivals, and is familiar with the way the festival operates and guarantees it. What kind of space is needed, and even which space can accommodate how many people, and how the audience diverts the flow, there are very careful observations and thoughts. Therefore, the advice he gives is specific and small, which can be said to provide a blueprint vision of the appearance of the movie palace.
With his suggestions and ideas, professional and technical personnel stepped in to gradually refine and integrate the structure of these functions in the next discussion. For example, journalists and friends who come to the Pingyao International Film Festival may feel that the venue for walking into the press conference is always very quiet - at the beginning of the design, we made a distinction between it and a large number of moviegoers, keeping a certain distance. Functional plate distributions like this abound in the Pingyao Film Palace.
Pingyao Film Palace Atrium
After making a complete planning proposal for the entire factory, we invited the director to propose further modifications to this. Only to find that our design ideas and the director's ideas basically coincided, it can be said that they were quickly integrated: for example, both sides decided not to demolish and build in the factory area, and not to have too many reconstruction actions. Now as soon as you enter the gate of the Film Palace, you can still feel the industrial heritage temperament left over from that era.
We all attach great importance to the word "temperament", that is, we hope that the audience can still feel that this is a factory when they come in, and they will not feel that this is a big SHOPPING MALL, nor will they feel that it is as fashionable as the Cannes Film Palace. The director and I both want to retain the original factory temperament, and I am very happy about this, without similar art bits, this project would not have been completed in such a short period of time.
The steps are connected to create a sense of square
The renovation project started in 2017 and took more than half a year. The newly built buildings include "Spring in a Small Town", "Platform" and "Connecting Body". We have adopted an attitude of restrained intervention, and it is impossible not to intervene at all, because the new and old functions here are completely different, and some changes must be made.
Let's start with the "most inconspicuous" "connectors". As the name suggests, the original plants were all "single use", and now several separate plants need to be connected. How do I connect? There are many ways, but what we chose is to connect them with the smallest blocks that meet the functional needs according to the horizontal and vertical architectural characteristics of the single plant. Such a "connector", everyone will not pay too much attention in the process of use. After all, the "connecting body" is a supporting role, don't be distracted.
The middle factory building should be used as a hall for celebrities walking the red carpet to enter, and as a space for a small forum. After entering this hall, the north side is our main screening hall. I can describe this part of the "connecting body" in the most simple term: it is a corridor that has been enlarged a little, and the purpose is to make it easy for the audience to walk through it. As for the shape of the slope roof on the joint, it is necessary to comply with the protection plan of the ancient city, and the limited height also has the requirements of the shape. You know, the entire ancient city's architecture is actually required to be sloped roof shape.
Colonnade of the Palace of Cinema
A friend said that standing in front of the red carpet, there is a Greek temple feeling, and I would like to express this as a "temple". This is the "folding" treatment (and manifestation) of the wall, with glass on one side and organ-like flower windows on the other. The colonnade here, like the colonnade of ancient Chinese architecture and the colonnade of a Greek temple, although it is not a real colonnade, it will help to establish a feeling of being in front of the temple in the mind of the audience. Including the style of the slope roof, the slope is carefully measured, and it also reinforces a temple-like psychological cue. We don't want to make this place a "palace", which completely destroys the original tone of the industrial heritage. We only offer tangible utility and less straightforward associations (laughs).
Pingyao Film Palace, No. 1-4 Screening Hall "Big Workshop", Forum Space, Foyer, VIP Lounge.
In fact, the design of the steps is what I am most proud of. Originally, these factories existed separately, so the original steps were 1.8 meters wide, very small and narrow. The lack of a sense of grandeur, especially in front of the red carpet district, is not a concept of a square, and we must establish this sense of sublimity. So it was outside the three factory buildings, and the whole was connected by large steps. This amount of work is not big, it is nothing more than connecting the steps of the original three factory buildings, but creating a sense of form in front of the Film Palace.
We just want to provide a strong psychological cue with the least recognizable alteration. If you look at the steps before the renovation and compare them with the present, you will find that the visual changes are so drastic. This involves design theory, known in the industry as "design typology", that is, you provide this type to everyone, and everyone will naturally accept this psychological cue, and then establish corresponding awareness and cognition. After so many years of development and evolution, human beings have long been accustomed to seeing the big steps, which is the feeling of entering the temple.
The combination and sympathy of heaven and earth people must be moving
The purpose of the construction of "Spring in a Small Town" and "Platform" is entirely to meet the needs of the scale of the film festival. Their names are also very cinematic, the former is the business card of director Fei Mu, and the latter is the masterpiece of director Jia Zhangke.
"Spring in a Small Town" is a big movie hall, because the film festival needs a hall that can accommodate 500 people to watch the film, and it must also be able to undertake some premiere ceremonies and awards ceremonies. In terms of design, the first thing to follow is the height limit, we combined with the original soil slope of the factory area because of the situation, which is itself a height difference, and this height difference is used to make the audience seat up the stairs. I would like to emphasize that all the new buildings here are lower in height than the original factory buildings. And the "platform" is not even a building, but more like a landscape structure.
"Platform" during the day
The original intention of the "platform" was to accommodate 1500 people for the premiere of the film festival. Imagine if you build a movie hall with a capacity of 1500 people, it will be super high. So when choosing the site, it happened to be on this slope, and we had to design it in this way, because this is Pingyao, a national historical and cultural city with a history of more than 2,700 years, and a world cultural heritage. You can't even dig deep, and you have to produce as little earthwork as possible. The less you change this factory area, the more you can retain the original taste of this field.
The "platform" seen by the audience now does not cause visual aggression to the factory area, and everyone will feel that it is in a position between existence and non-existence, and it does not appear abrupt. Only by entering it will you find out, Phew! It turned out to be quite big. At the entrance, all you can see is the steps and the "stop signs". It's a kind of "invisibility", which incorporates our respect for the factory itself.
"Platform" at night
The spatial constraints of design are often the way out of thinking breakthroughs. I first mentioned the idea of an amphitheatre with Director Jacchenk and Artistic Director Mark Muller. They all loved it, but still had a lot of rounds of discussions about specific issues because the design was too challenging. But where the open air, it is faced with an insurmountable natural environment, wind and rain is a force majeure. Weighing it again and again, we consider that a large number of small towns in China, including state-owned factories and mining enterprises, have collective memories of open-air screening of films, and this intimacy is invaluable to the relationship between the audience and the film.
Especially when the guests visit, when they stand on the steps of the screening room, there is not only a huge movie curtain in front of them, but also the gate tower of the ancient city. If the audience here looks up slightly, they will also find that the walls and gate towers of the entire ancient city will become the background of the screen. I think this scene has realized a kind of combination and sympathy of heaven and earth people, which must be moving. The cornices on the edge of the screen are very ancient, in fact, they were added later. This is thanks to the film festival, which itself has stage art resources, which are made by stage teachers, which can evoke the feeling of a familiar and unfamiliar ancient city and increase the audience's intimate feeling for this screen. Of course, when you don't show it during the day, you can feel that this is a large shadow wall.
The gazebo and the auditorium of the "platform"
By design, the field is large, so we need to control it at the boundary, and if not, the view of the audience will be too scattered, so we added two functional pavilions. Speaking of this, it is also the advice given to me by director Jia Zhangke from the perspective of the sense of film festival ceremony, he hopes that before the premiere or the evening release of the film, there can be a "glory moment" link for the main creator of the crew. At that time, the creators will sit in the pavilion first, and the highlights of the theater will be hit, they will wave to the audience, and they will also accept the applause and praise of the audience. This is a warm moment for filmmakers to interact with the audience, and it is necessary to design the sense of ceremony that should be designed. In this pavilion, director Feng Xiaogang, director Wu Yusen, director Zhang Yimou and director Diao Yinan have all sat, including some major international directors, who have received greetings from 1,500 audiences in this place rich in Chinese cultural imagery.
As a designer, I sometimes feel guilty, especially when it's cold and raining. Once, when I was playing a movie here, it suddenly rained a little, and I noticed that the audience was very quiet and put on their ponchos and continued to watch the movie... People who really love movies will have a great tolerance for the Pingyao International Film Festival. A film critic friend wrote that the protagonist on the screen wore a cloak and walked through the mountains and forests, while the audience was wearing a poncho in front of the screen and swaying, "For a moment, there was a sudden feeling of out-of-body experience." "Well said, I wasn't a fan of the film, but taking over the project made me fall in love with movies.
Many media friends also told me that they have participated in so many international film festivals before, and they have never had the experience of watching in the open air, which is one of their "peak moments of watching movies". Hearing such an evaluation, I was touched and guilty. I have been talking to the director that I hope to provide some temperature compensation, and design several plans to shield the wind and rain...
Familiar and unfamiliar, "pleasing the ordinary people of this city"
Director Jia Zhangke's requirements for our design team are to go to internationally renowned film festivals. He has a very good artistic accomplishment and knows very well the degree and effect of grasping and presenting. He just wanted us to find a sense in the design, but didn't specifically give us a direction or a pattern. As a designer, we focus on two things: first, what everyone will like, and secondly, what kind of surprises can be provided to everyone in addition to these satisfactions. I proposed a concept to the design team called "familiar and unfamiliar" - there must be a sense of freshness, can not be completely repaired as old, restored to a factory, but the premise is not to destroy the industrial texture here.
All the "freshness" comes from the details provided. For example, you will see some rusty steel plates in the movie palace, which is a typical existence in industrial relics, and when the roaring machines are removed, they become the medicine of past memories. Then there is the size of the window of the factory, we have not changed at all, but if you look closely at the door handle, the real plant is not like this, we are using a little change to make everyone have a little "strangeness". Another example is the brick wall of the façade of the "Spring of the Small Town", the red bricks in the lower part and the gray bricks in the upper part are newly built, and the brick walls of the original factory are not placed in this way. The red bricks below, we also deliberately went to find some textured masonry, here is not to say more, if you imagine that the front is all a green brick wall, is it a little too cold?
"Spring in a Small Town"
The mystery of design sometimes lies in the fact that its existence may not be remarkable, but without this consideration, it will make people feel empty. When we design, without violating the audience's eyes, the intention is to make everyone feel comfortable when they pass by, if you want to stop and look carefully, you will also find that there are some different ingenuities here, I think this is enough, designers still don't brush too much sense of existence (laughs). At the beginning of the design, we were also wondering if the organizing committee wanted a more international and more fashionable look. Is it necessary to use all kinds of novel technologies? Happily, including the director, they all felt that it was better to present a relatively simple façade. Anyone can see that the design and presentation here is not expensive.
I often tell the team that designers should also find their original intentions and know who we are going to serve. Do you want to serve the public and film fans, or do you serve your own surging creative desires and serve the various competitions in the industry? The original intention is corrected, we are also relaxed, and everyone comes to visit and relax, because they all feel that the environment here is friendly to them and is not aggressive.
We have connected several independent factories here into a convenient movie palace wherever you go. When you go from hall to hall, at most a few minutes away, friends and viewers in the media do not have to worry about time and physical problems. It is to make everyone feel that all the resources are around you after they come, and you can easily choose what you want in it. Of course, we are also planning future local adjustments and optimizations, at the beginning I really did not expect that the film festival would come so many people...
Director Jia Zhangke is a Shanxi person, I am also a Shanxi person, if we have a little "selfishness", but also hope that Pingyao's fellow villagers, those who have lived and worked in the original factory in this city for most of their lives, when they enter the Pingyao Film Palace, they will not feel like walking into a completely strange place, and the original memories have been robbed. I've always thought that if the locals weren't willing to accept it, if they didn't want to get close to it, then the design was a failure.
Fortunately, after the completion of the Movie Palace, it is often seen that there are old masters wearing vests here to hang out. To be honest, I was the happiest to see this scene. One year, on the second day of the Chinese New Year, I happened to be in Pingyao for the New Year, and it was once full. Some are out-of-town tourists, more are local fellows, who call on friends to watch movies. And, you know what they say? Not to go to pingyao film palace to see a movie, or to say, "Let's go, let's go to the diesel engine factory!" ”
Passers-by who ride past the Film Palace
"Restrained intervention" is a design principle that I have been following for more than a decade. Previously, foreign media asked me what was the biggest difficulty in designing this place? I said, the biggest difficulty is my own brain, I want to restrain my desire to express as a designer. For the alteration or renewal of the industrial heritage, I first hope that it will continue to serve everyone in the original land. Just like this diesel engine factory, it may have had its own school, workers' club, etc., and many people here may have been factory children and spent their wonderful childhood here. Although the production function of the factory has left the city today, I hope that its function of pleasing the city is still there, and the function of pleasing ordinary people in this city will always exist.
Editor-in-charge: Cheng Yu