Floating Cabin by Atelier Wen’Arch

Conceived as a temporary yet transformative installation for the Shanghai Urban Space Art Season, the Floating Cabin by Atelier Wen’Arch is located on the high-pile dock of Fuxing Island Shipyard Park in Shanghai. Positioned within the former Zhonghua Shipyard, the project operates as a supplementary riverside public space—one that invites rest, gathering, and event-based occupation while engaging deeply with the site’s industrial legacy.

Rather than introducing an alien architectural object, the Floating Cabin grows directly from its context. Shipbuilding cranes, flood-control walls, pump houses, and heavy infrastructure define a landscape that appears static yet charged with latent movement. The project translates this condition into architecture, offering a contemporary spatial device that resists fixed typology and instead embraces suspension, transformation, and uncertainty.

A Site-Driven Concept of “Floating” and “Cabin”

The conceptual framework of the Floating Cabin is embedded in two intertwined ideas. The term “cabin” references both the mechanical aesthetics of shipyard architecture and the notion of a functional enclosure capable of hosting changing programs. “Floating,” on the other hand, describes not buoyancy but a suspended structural state—an architecture held in tension between ground, infrastructure, and air.

This duality reflects the site itself. Massive industrial structures dominate the dock, frozen in time yet hinting at motion and productivity. The Floating Cabin extends this character by adopting a machine-like presence that appears poised for action, even when still.

Preserving and Activating Industrial Remnants

A key design decision was to preserve existing industrial elements rather than conceal or replace them. The adjacent pump house—an inaccessible concrete structure embedded in the flood-control wall—has no interior floor slab and connects directly to the river below. Alongside it, a raised maintenance platform and exposed pipelines once served critical mechanical functions.

Instead of erasing these remnants, the architects integrated them into the project’s logic. The Floating Cabin is spatially attached but structurally independent from the pump house, using the existing platform, pipes, and wall as anchors within a new system of support, suspension, and tension. This approach maintains the site’s authenticity while allowing new forms of occupation to emerge.

A Structure Defined by Tension and Movement

The Floating Cabin’s structure is deliberately expressive. Slender steel double columns with a 50mm cross-section support a roof composed of overlapping glued laminated timber beams. Between these beams, an integrated equipment zone houses a mechanical pulley system that suspends a series of metal “cabin panels” via steel cables.

Each panel can rotate at a fixed angle, controlled by the pulley mechanism. At their lower ends, diagonal steel tie rods form inverted V-shaped sections, collectively stabilizing the structure and reinforcing its lateral resistance. Four sets of these V-shaped rods work together to “support” the steel beams resting on the existing concrete platform, creating a balanced system where load, tension, and movement coexist.

The entire steel framework is painted in Prussian blue, a color historically associated with shipyard machinery, further anchoring the new intervention in its industrial surroundings. Above, a roof of translucent polycarbonate panels filters sunlight, producing a soft, diffused glow that contrasts with the heaviness of the surrounding dock infrastructure.

Spatial Experience Between Transparency and Reflection

Beneath the suspended structure, the original maintenance platform has been transformed into a 40-centimeter-high wooden deck, offering a place to sit, pause, and observe the river. One of the suspended cabin panels on the western side passes through the pump house’s window openings before realigning parallel to its eastern counterpart. This gesture allows visitors standing on the platform to experience layered views of water, light installations, and reflections.

Mirrored stainless steel panels subtly capture fragments of everyday dock life—movement, weather, people—turning the cabin into a constantly changing visual field. Inside the pump house, a lighting installation bearing the text “empty room 2025susas” frames the structure as a silent industrial relic, an inaccessible void that holds the memory of past labor and production.

From Suspended Object to Open Platform

In its default state, the cabin panels tilt upward, forming a hovering enclosure that defines a shaded, intimate space below. From a distance, the structure reads as a floating industrial artifact—an object momentarily paused in motion. When activated, however, the mechanical system allows the panels to rotate into a horizontal position.

In this configuration, the Floating Cabin becomes a layered, open platform, similar to the mezzanine floors of traditional market buildings. This horizontal state expands the project’s capacity, allowing it to host exhibitions, performances, temporary markets, or even a future rooftop garden. The architecture thus shifts from shelter to stage, from object to infrastructure.

Event-Driven Architecture for the Contemporary City

Since its installation, the Floating Cabin has hosted concerts, pop-up exhibitions, markets, and public gatherings. It has also served as the finish line for the “Run, Liangzai!” urban running event, where neon lighting and temporary installations transformed the dock into a vibrant, celebratory landscape. These scenarios hint at the project’s potential as a catalyst for event-driven light commercial and cultural activity along the riverfront.

More than a static pavilion, the Floating Cabin is a responsive architectural machine. Its ability to change configuration allows it to adapt to shifting urban needs, seasons, and programs—embracing uncertainty as a design asset rather than a limitation.

An Architecture Without Fixed Typology

Ultimately, the Floating Cabin resists classification. It is neither pavilion nor building, neither sculpture nor infrastructure, yet it draws from all these categories. By translating the shipyard’s industrial language into a flexible, kinetic public space, Atelier Wen’Arch offers a new model for post-industrial urban activation.

As the structure moves between angled suspension and horizontal openness, it reveals architecture as a process rather than a form—one shaped by context, memory, and collective use. In doing so, the Floating Cabin captures the spirit of a site in transition and offers a compelling vision for how cities might reuse their industrial past to create adaptable public futures.

Photography: Hao Chen & Guowei Liu