Fruit Market × Roadside Station

In the mountain orchards of Chengdu's Eastern New Area, the harvest brings congestion and the rest of the year brings silence. Sandawan Village sits at the junction of a scenic route, yet its traditional fruit market does one thing only—brief wholesale trade—leaving landscape, tourism and community life untapped. Fruit Market × Roadside Station reimagines this rural hub as a “Market-cum-Station”: public infrastructure fusing logistics, retail, brand display and social gathering into a single, all-weather anchor.

Its defining gesture is a reversal of convention: logistics in front, market behind. The loading and sorting of fruit—usually hidden at the back—is drawn to the roadside and “theatricalized,” turning everyday rural labour into a living spectacle. Passing travellers watch produce move straight from orchard to crate; trust in freshness and provenance is built in the open, and the dignity of rural work is placed under the spotlight rather than tucked away.

Formally, the project lifts the humble agricultural greenhouse into architecture. Lightweight steel and translucent membrane form a roof of alternating concave and convex curves that echoes the silhouette of the Longquan Mountains—a landmark that glows softly beside the road at dusk, drawing people to stop. Beneath it, layered spaces let the same building host warehousing, live-streaming, exhibition and rest, flexing between the rhythms of harvest and quiet season.

More than a single structure, it is conceived as a modular, replicable system for rural revitalization—one that can travel across varied terrain and grow with the village over time. Set at the meeting point of urban traffic and rural production, the building becomes a stage where the circulation of fruit is transformed into a platform for identity, encounter and belonging.

It answers a pressing contemporary question: how design, with restraint and warmth, can empower fragile rural economies and give a village a reason to gather.