White Bloom Tower / Atelier Guo

Text description provided by the architects. Built on the riverside terrace of Yangshuo Sugar House, White Bloom Tower is a central installation for the 2023 New Year’s celebration to be set ablaze to welcome the new year. The site, where the installation is located, was once a dock for the old sugar factory to deliver goods and is now the space of the Sugar House facing the Li River landscape, thus making it an iconic place. After burning in the New Year celebration in 2023, White Bloom Tower will be rebuilt on the hill enclosed by the hotel, standing in the woods as if it is part of them.

The tensegrity system is designed as the main structure of the White Bloom Tower, in which the components of the tower are completely separated, breaking the horizontal stratification. Rotated in the horizontal plane and interspersed in the vertical direction, three groups of rods are restrained and positioned by tension cables, forming the main structural skeleton of the tower.

Four groups of veils are suspended from the rods, rotating from the bottom to the top in diminishing groups. The veils at the same time reveal the unreadable rotation of the main structure. The first level of the “veil” is at eye level, allowing people to enter the fire tower and separate from the surrounding environment to focus on the space and structure inside the fire tower. The rotation of the “veil” reveals the unnoticeable rotation of the three sets of rods in the horizontal direction.

Like a sail, the veil captures the force of the wind, allowing the tower to sway slightly with the wind, giving it a sense of the life of a tree. Thus White Bloom Tower could approach the presence of noble sacred wood, the spiritual type of the minorities.