Jiakun Architects

‘Red Era’ Entertainment Center

Location: Nijia-qiao Road, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, P.R.C

Design: 12/2000-3/2001

Completion: 8/2001

Architect: LIU Jiakun (Collaborateur: FAN Xiaodong)

The project of ‘Red Era’ Entertainment Center is that of the reconstruction of a ‘Lan-wei’ building , whose original style is designed as the faked Western Classical one. The building had been left unused for many years before new owner took over it. Then, there were many new requests for it from interior to exterior following the building’s functional changes, for example, in the daytime, it should be a landmark in the city and the appearance should not be too aggressive with some government’s city rules, at night, it should show the impression of an entertainment complex; and the cost was especially limited as it is for rent.

This reconstruction project remains much original structural condition and keeps enclosure naked without decoration, which is the old façade. The new facade is a shutter skin, which is made of red spray-painted aluminum and whose interval to the old façade is 90 cm. Following the interior function, the way of making hole to and protruding outwards the skin is restraint and produces a totally new system of skin. Bars, discos and night-clubs are main content of the Center and ‘revolution’, ‘youth’, ‘rebel’ and ‘passion’ are the key-words of its theme. The dark-red of the shutter skin roots in the color of the cover of Cui Jian’s CD “Rock and Roll on the New Long March”. In the day, the dark-red façade is both exciting and silent, and at night, the images of the staircases and window holes on the old façade shine upon the shutter skin by the inside lighting. The interior original effects of cements, paints, steel plates and coarse crafts are to match the designed theme and to reduce the costs. (Translated by Deng Jing)