Chetian Cultural Center is a public building constructed from local blue stone, providing spaces for village-history displays, reading, craft workshops and everyday encounters. The building occupies a compact position in the southwestern corner of the site. Its substantial stone walls shelter the adjoining plaza, leaving the rare expanse of open land available to the villagers. Terraces, low walls and stone blocks extend across the plaza towards the river, following the parallel order of the hillside settlement and allowing the centre’s public activities to continue outdoors.

The riverside waterwheel, a raised water channel that changes direction across the site, and a well together form the spatial framework of the plaza. Walls and rows of columns supporting the channel establish edges within the open ground. An array of stone columns, an outdoor stage and gathering spaces are arranged along this framework. They can be used separately or combined for Miao opera, weddings and everyday gatherings of different sizes. The waterwheel and channel evoke the village’s irrigation history, while the stone column array recalls the local legend of Nine Dragons Slope, bringing public activities and local memory together in the plaza.

Set to one side as a backdrop to the plaza, Chetian Cultural Center creates inward-looking courtyard spaces within its substantial stone walls. Three bands of rooms alternate with three bands of courtyards, continuing the settlement’s parallel order. Enclosing stone walls and open courts work together to bring sky and daylight into the building. A partly open corridor draws on the village’s stepped lanes and the places outside homes where neighbours gather to talk, linking village-history displays, reading rooms and craft workshops. Familiar routes and scales make room for pausing and conversation, reconnecting public life indoors and out.

Local blue stone continues across walls, roofs and paving, making construction itself part of the continuity of village memory. Studying existing stone houses, the architects combined the appearance and craft of traditional dry-jointed masonry with mortared wall cores and structural posts, adapting inherited techniques to contemporary building conditions. Traces of cutting, fitting and trial remain visible in the stonework, recording how a public building gradually came into being through many hands. The weight of the stone and the variations of handwork give this new house a familiar, substantial presence.

Stone walls, coloured glass and black metal create distinct spatial atmospheres. Coloured daylight falls on the dark blue stone, while metal elements and rough masonry bring different material qualities into relation. Light, touch and the resonance of struck metal enrich the experience of ordinary materials. Practical needs and the villagers’ emotional experience are considered together, putting construction at the service of reading, learning skills, conversation and celebration, and allowing collective memory to grow through public life in the present.