The Silk Road Immersive Pavilion joint design course concluded over the weekend at Southwest China’s Chongqing University, having brought together 33 students from six universities across China, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan to develop interactive cultural heritage experiences.
The week-long course featured lectures, multisensory experiences, design development sessions, hands-on construction, and final presentations. Students designed and constructed seven full-scale immersive cultural pavilions, utilizing architecture, sound, scent, tactile elements, and interactions to breathe life into traditional cultures.
Among the highlights were the Chongqing University team’s Bamboo Stream Veil Pavilion, inspired by teahouse culture, and the Tapak Trikala Urip, crafted by students from Indonesia’s Institut Teknologi Bandung, which explored childhood, adulthood, and late life. The latter received the camp’s Most Popular Pavilion Award.
According to the organizers, all seven pavilion projects will be exhibited in Brunei in late August as part of an international conference.
“This camp enabled Chinese students to work alongside their peers from different countries in design and construction,” said Xie Hui, director of the Soundscape Research Center (X-scape Lab) at Chongqing University. “Through communication and collaboration, students gained a deeper understanding of one another’s cultures and perspectives.”