About the FRAME Awards

Launched by the renowned Dutch design publication FRAME Magazine (founded in 1997), the FRAME Awards rank among the world’s most influential spatial design honors.

As a barometer for the international design community, FRAME consistently tracks cutting-edge trends in architecture, interiors, installations, and experiential design. Its jury comprises leading designers, scholars, and media professionals from across the globe.

Each year, the FRAME Awards selects the most innovative and socially impactful design projects from thousands of outstanding submissions worldwide. Winning signifies that a project has achieved the highest international recognition for its creative expression, cultural depth, and spatial experience.

Project Background

In 2023, the Guanzhong Mangba Art Festival invited architects to participate as exhibitors for the first time. We were commissioned to renew a traditional courtyard in Caijiapo Village, Huyi District, Xi’an. Located north of the Qinling Mountains, this area has become a hub for art and rural construction practices. Since 2018, professors and students from the Experimental Art Department of the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, led by Mr. Wu Xiaochuan, have established the “Guanzhong Art Cooperative” here and continuously advanced the festival’s localized development.

Design Concept

The northern side of the original courtyard contained an abandoned kitchen and a dilapidated warehouse, which were prone to severe water logging in summer. Our design aimed to address these fundamental functional issues while exploring new possibilities for village renewal.

We drew inspiration from the wave-shaped tile elements of local dwellings, allowing them to flow down the sloping roof to form a curtain-like metal facade texture that responds to natural light, shadow, and the rural fabric. A circular passage at the exhibition hall entrance guides visitors deeper into the courtyard. Rotating metal mesh curtains radiate multiple lines across the pavement, serving dual functions of drainage and way finding.

The courtyard’s elevation was carefully designed to channel rainwater into a linear drainage ditch on the south side, ensuring a comfortable experience in both the exhibition hall and the courtyard. The circular passage also connects two fruit trees with the trees behind the house, forming new spatial relationships that stimulate the imagination of the rural landscape.

Materials and Construction

The perforated metal panels were prefabricated in the factory and assembled on-site within two days. The aperture size and spacing were meticulously calibrated to create three visual layers: transparency, reflection, and projection. Sunlight, the blue sky, and the brick wall interweave at different times, creating a visual experience reminiscent of flowing water.

Inside the exhibition hall, the original brick wall was opened up, and a lightweight steel frame was added to reinforce the roof. The original kitchen chimney was preserved and transformed into a skylight niche, functioning both as a display area for exhibits and a resting nook for visitors.

Project Information

Project Name: Streaming Light Exhibition Hall — Inner Courtyard Renovation for the Guanzhong Mangba Art Festival
Client: Mangba Art Festival
Curators: Wu Xiaochuan, Song Qun, Guanzhong Art Cooperative
Location: Caijiapo Village, Huyi District, Xi’an
Building Area: 37 ㎡
Site Area: 97 ㎡
Design Firm: Daipu Architects
Lead Architect: Dai Pu
Project Architect: Zhao Xinyu
Design Team: Zhao Xinyu, Huang Zhiyi, Wang Zhengqi
Structural Consultant: Yang Xiaotian / I-Structure
Photographer: Wu Qingshan
Design Period: May 2023 – September 2023
Construction Period: September 2023 – January 2024

The Streaming Light Exhibition Hall, designed by Daipu Architects, has won the Popular Choice Award in the Architecture + Metal category and was named a Finalist in the Architecture + Facades category at the 2025 Architizer A+ Awards. This dual recognition from one of the world’s most prestigious architecture awards underscores the project’s innovation in design and material expression on a global stage.

The Architizer A+ Awards is one of the largest and most influential architecture awards worldwide, organized by the leading architecture platform Architizer. Celebrating the most creative and impactful architecture, spaces, products, and design leaders globally, the awards are determined through a combination of a professional jury and public voting. With thousands of entries from over 100 countries annually, the A+ Awards are regarded as a vital benchmark in contemporary architectural discourse.

Streaming Light Exhibition Hall is situated in Caijiapo Village, Huyi District, Xi’an, and is part of a rural courtyard revitalization initiative for the Guanzhong Mangba Art Festival. The site, previously a dilapidated kitchen and storage space, was frequently flooded during summer rains. Confronting these challenges, the design team addressed fundamental structural and drainage issues while proposing a courtyard renewal strategy that blends vernacular language with contemporary spatial interpretation.

Inspired by traditional wave-shaped roof tiles common in the Guanzhong region, the team reinterpreted this element into a dynamic metal façade that cascades along the sloped roof, resembling a flowing curtain. A circular passageway inserted at the gallery entrance invites visitors into the courtyard’s north end. This passage triggers the rotation of the metal mesh curtain and extends into radial paving lines—serving both as spatial articulation and an integrated rainwater drainage system.

“Winning the Popular Choice Award is an inspiring honor for our team,” said Dai Pu, Principal Architect. “We hope this project encourages people to imagine new relationships between nature and space. Flowing Light Gallery centers around interaction—with light, water, materials, and people—creating a space that is participatory and full of movement.”

The project uses prefabricated stainless steel perforated panels, manufactured in segments and assembled rapidly on-site. The size and spacing of the perforations were precisely calibrated to create layered effects, including transparency, mirror reflection, and shadow. As daylight shifts, so too does the spatial atmosphere: at times, the metal mesh reflects the sky like a mirror; at others, it becomes nearly transparent, revealing the original brick architecture behind.

Inside the gallery, the original brick partitions were removed to create a more fluid and open exhibition space. The roof was reinforced with a lightweight triangular steel frame. The old kitchen chimney was preserved and transformed into a skylit niche, which can be used both for displaying artworks and as a quiet resting alcove.

“This project not only responds to climate and site constraints,” added Zhao Xinyu, Project Architect, “but also explores new cultural possibilities for rural architecture in a contemporary context.”

special mention prize

On June 3rd EST, the highly anticipated 12th Annual Architizer A+Awards announced this year’s winners. The awards bring together outstanding entries from more than 80 countries around the world, and the winners were selected after a rigorous judging process.

Waterside Bar, designed by Daipu Architects, won the Special Mention in the Unbuilt Hospitality category.

（https://winners.architizer.com/）

waterside perspective 01

Langjiu Estate has always been an important carrier for describing the centuries-old story of the Langjiu brand. For Langjiu Group’s newly planned Longma Winery in Luzhou City, Sichuan Province, Daipu Architects designed a bar that embodies the spirit of the centuries-old brand and traditional culture charm.

waterside perspective 02

street perspective

In recent years, Daipu Architects has been exploring various opportunities – trying new architectural expressions to respond to traditional historical issues. The bar island in Longma Manor provides an excellent site facing the lake and backing up to the market. So we imagined the bar building as a stone standing by the lake, and through the sculpture of the stone, we created a hidden place for climbing, traveling and exploring in the downtown area. At the same time, we have been thinking about how to combine traditional aesthetic experiences with contemporary lifestyles.

roof

Launched by Architizer in collaboration with The Wall Street Journal, Phaidon, WSl and other renowned media outlets, the A+Awards are dedicated to recognizing the best in architecture, spatial projects, and product design around the world. the Architizer A+Awards ensures that the awards are prestigious and authoritative with its rigorous judging criteria and a shortlisting rate of as low as 5 percent.

（trophies）

This achievement by Daipu Architects not only reflects the international judges’ affirmation of our design aesthetics, but also the influence of Chinese design in the global design arena.

The winners of the 17th IDA International Design Awards (IDA) have been announced. Among the thousands of entries from more than 80 countries and regions around the world, Daipu Architects’ historical building renovation project – Force Field Hutong, has won the Bronze Award in the category of Commercial Buildings of the Year 2023.

IDA International Design Awards is one of the most authoritative international design awards in the U.S., co-founded by a handful of designers, thinkers and entrepreneurs in 2007 in California, U.S., known as the world’s major well-known design awards “wind vane”, IDA is one of the most respected global leading design awards.

(screenshot of official website https://www.idesignawards.com/winners)

certificate

summer evening

waterbank in winter

bookstore & cafe

BETTER FUTURE is a global independent design promotion organization. Its global community now has 115,000 members. In 2021, its teams recognized more than $472 billion in design projects and raised the profile of more than 1,580 design projects.

With “393 Art Center” (Ningjin County Gongbi painting Art Center), Daipu Architects won the Gold Award for Conceptual Design in the Architectural Design category.

© Daipu Architects

© Daipu Architects

Daipu Architects Wins Gold at 2023 London Design Awards / © Daipu Architects

393 Art Center is located in the county of Chinese Gongbi painting: Ningjin County, Xingtai City, Hebei Province. Before the intervention of Daipu Architects, there were already three buildings of different periods and structural forms on the site, resulting in a discrete spatial relationship of the whole park and there is no well-planned circulation. Therefore, we apply a strategy: introducing the plane form of the palette, integrating the different forms of buildings; not only highlighting the artistic characteristics of the town of Gongbi painting with the palette, but also connecting the circulation of visits to form a very open external image and convergent central courtyard. When completed, it will welcome visitors from all directions to gather here, rejoice under the rain porch and in the square. The undulating concrete curves will continue to inspire new discoveries and feelings in the art center.

original building / © Daipu Architects

original building / © Daipu Architects

model / © Daipu Architects

The 393 Art Center is equipped with a 600-meter exhibition line length, showing visitors a large number of art works while giving the surrounding villagers richer possibilities for their lives. The new part of the building includes a public library, an academic conference hall, artists’ studios, a café and an art store, allowing local and foreign visitors to enjoy the architectural space and art while organizing a variety of activities, including cultural salons, art education, and public reading.

entry to visiors center / © Daipu Architects

Daipu Architects visited and researched the townships, talked with villagers and Gongbi painting artists, sorted out the needs of the local industry-related people and the neighboring villagers, and also discussed the local government’s vision. We hope that the 393 Art Center will not only show the bright prospects of the development of the local Gongbi painting industry since the reform and opening-up, but also demonstrate the long history and vivid vitality of the creation of Gongbi painting.

exhibition / © Daipu Architects

library / © Daipu Architects

Lv Pinjing, Dong Shubing, Liu Qingyuan, Huang Sunquan, Li Yifan, Liu Kecheng, Zuo Jing, Liang Jingyu, Hou Xiaolei, Li Hongbo, Wang Yi, Li Hao, Shi Hongshuai, Peng De, Wang He, He Zhe, Wang Muzhi, Xu Lingyi and other experts and scholars in various fields attended the opening ceremony and forum.

The installation “The Veil” designed by Daipu Architects for this art festival is expected to be completed and opened in late November.

“The Veil” continues the exploration of design strategy similar as the previous project ” Force Field Hutong “, which is often in a deeply embarrassing condition that is “impossible to touch the essence”. The premise of this kind of creation is mostly under the shadow of “unspeakable” ideology, the ” self-censorship” of the special location, and the “unpredictable risk” that honest design may bring. But fortunately, the initiators of such projects are also different from the general real estate development mindset that is indifferent to innovation. In this type of project, we are able to give each other the utmost sincerity and respect. This is the fundamental prerequisite for the creation to become a WORK in the end. It is neither a commission or financial threat from one party to another, nor is it a work of coping or compromise.

When the ideal core actions (such as attempts to renovate the structure, to stimulate the use of external space, etc.) were taken out of consideration, we continued our experiment of wrapping the Hutong Gravity Field in Beijing for the third site of the Mangba Arts Festival. In this exploration, we attempted to combine the form of underlayment of old buildings in Guanzhong with metal material, transforming it into a lighter translucent mesh structure, which is carried over to the expression of the façade, putting a metal veil on the old buildings.

The real old façade and the new contemporary skin are revealed simultaneously, as the metal tiles flow down the sloping veil, twisting and creasing as the entrance rotates. Visitors will enter the gallery through a time lens made of stainless-steel panels, experiencing exhibits or paintings from different eras and in different curatorial contexts.

Daipu Architects has been actively involved in rural development issues and discussions, deeply involved in the design practice of urban and rural development in villages and towns, helping to break the simple pattern of urban-rural dichotomy and promoting more urban-rural intermingling – a multi-dimensional two-way feeder of cultural and industrial development.

This activity is an important part of the Fifth Guanzhong Mangba Arts Festival, which cuts through the perspective of history and geography, nature and humanities, society and field. Since March, more than 30 groups of 50 outstanding artists, designers, architects, writers and practitioners have been invited to go deep into the social scene, resident research, and picking up practice, and with the help of all kinds of art forms and cultural forms, to discover unused space, carry out art practice With the help of various art forms and cultural forms, the exhibition explores idle space, carries out art practice, stimulates the vitality of the place, forms many new scenes, creates a large number of art works, and builds a multi-type, multi-dimensional and multi-level “Earth Art Exhibition under the South Mountain”.