Timeless Beacon

Invited by a regional art festival, the design team created this installation on the old market of a riverside town, the largest abandoned building in a fair founded in the late Ming dynasty that thrived for centuries until the 1980s.

As urbanisation drew young people away and online shopping replaced physical markets, the fair slowly emptied, leaving concrete houses and old brick buildings along quiet streets where a few elderly residents still sit and talk. A tall cone of translucent fabric in gradient colours now rises from the old market like a lighthouse, glowing over the rooftops and the river and drawing people back to the place.