Fun for All: Co-Habitable Cat House, Qianmen前门共栖猫屋

On Qianmen Street in Beijing, a 600-year-old district on the city's Central Axis, nine red fiberglass chairs joined the grey bricks and red wooden doors of the old neighborhood. Fun for All was made for the Qianmen Chair Project, an invitation from Beijing Tianjie Group and Black Bow to ten artists and teams for the 2025 Qianmen Food Festival, open from 26 September to 31 October. It develops the co-habitable cat house first shown as three wooden prototypes at the Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale.

The design explores a shared space for people and small animals. Each module starts from human scale: a 450mm-high form that follows the curve of the body. Subtracting ellipsoids from it carves out caves sized for small animals. Units extend at 120 degrees horizontally and mirror vertically, so that the outside reads as furniture for people while the inside becomes a connected network of caves. Adults sit on the 45cm seat and feel held by its curves; children crawl through the bubble caves as a secret base; stray cats hide inside from the rain.

To survive outdoors, the wood became pressure- and scratch-resistant fiberglass, each module weighted with concrete against tipping and joined by Lego-style splicing and fasteners, so the layout can be taken apart and regrown by hand. The gradient of deep and light reds is drawn from the neighborhood's red doors and pillars, echoing the red walls and grey tiles of old Beijing. Without complex artistic symbols, the chairs fill the gap between looking and using: older residents chat in the sun, children play, tourists take photos.