By the sea — and nowhere else — people gather, drink, and share moments that are fleeting yet unforgettable. Heimat Architects completed Under the Same Eaves, a unique pavilion for the 2025 Aranya Theatre Festival in Qinhuangdao, China, through a two-phase process: 7 days of fast-paced design and 7 days of intensive construction. As the main station for baijiu tasting during the festival, the pavilion serves both as a social anchor and as a spatial expression of transience. Part of Migratory Birds 300, a 300-hour continuous art experiment, the project embraces full disassembly and reuse after the event — embodying a zero-waste and sustainable design ethos.
Set in a corner of the event’s “Sand City,” the pavilion forms a small courtyard made up of three tasting corridors and a service unit with a bar. Each corridor consists of repeating modular platforms covered with eaves, arranged to enclose a casual space for people to drink, meet, and relax. The layout creates both openness and intimacy, suitable for spontaneous social encounters.
The architectural rhythm of the space is deliberate. Inward-facing eaves are raised, allowing openness and visibility across the courtyard, while outward-facing eaves are low, requiring visitors to stoop to enter and encouraging seated contemplation. Guests can sit on edges, recline against sloped timber backs, or dangle their feet into the sand, redefining comfort and posture under the eaves.
Surrounded by other theatrical installations, the pavilion becomes a spatial intermission: quiet yet charged, open yet defined. Visitors drink, converse, or fall into silence beneath the soft light and filtered sound of the sea breeze and passing rain.
Construction was guided by strict reuse and simplicity principles. Two timber sizes, readily available from local suppliers — 25×105 mm timber planks and 35×55 mm timber battens — were used. The tasting corridors were built from repeating units, each made from truss units in a “sandwich” configuration of two boards enclosing a third, connected by beams and diagonal supports. This modular system provided both strength and ease of assembly.
The bar service zone consists of a bar counter and a storage room, both sheltered beneath a hipped roof. The storage room also functions as part of the roof truss support structure. In addition, two freestanding columns provide extra support and are laterally stabilized by the bar counter. The roof covering is made of common waterproof polyester fabric, which is wrapped and fastened around timber battens along the inner and outer eaves.
Under the Same Eaves marks Heimat Architects’ latest contribution to the Migratory Birds 300 section of the Aranya Theatre Festival. In June this year, like migratory birds, we returned once more to this familiar and magical beach, reigniting the challenge of working within extreme time compression and radically condensed spatial experience. Like a piece of theatre, it is an immersive practice confined by time and space — for the body, the imagination, and the emotions. Here, time is rinsed by the tide, and every moment becomes infinitely open. Under the Same Eaves (2025): light in form, warm in spirit.
