Xiajie Tea Plaza, led by architect Yuting Zhang and Pu Zhang at Studio RE+N, is a transformative urban design and landscape project located at the eastern end of the thousand-year-old Gushi Town Street in Songyang County. Situated at the urban-rural interface, this site carries profound cultural and geographical significance: once the birthplace of Songyang’s iconic Caiyuan Tea, it had since deteriorated into a disused plot surrounded by informal housing and temporary vegetable gardens. The design reimagines the plaza as a floating stage above the historical tea fields, offering visitors a sensory engagement with tea culture while providing local residents a vibrant, multifunctional public space.

The project draws its conceptual foundation from the legend of the "two and a half" Caiyuan Gardens, merging folklore with contemporary urban renewal strategies. Architectural and landscape elements, such as enlarged vegetable trellises, modular door panels, arches, stone steps, seating, and eaves, are rooted in local history, culture, and collective memory. These features were meticulously derived from the architect's anthropological observations of the rural vernacular, reinterpreting everyday objects through the lens of contemporary art. By re-contextualizing these familiar forms—such as a scaled-up vegetable trellis or rotating seats—the design encourages users to view their daily environment with fresh perspectives, transforming the ordinary into extraordinary.

The plaza serves as a dynamic stage for community interaction, hosting activities like children’s play, grain drying, and traditional performances of Yue Gong Diao, tai chi, waist drum dances, and chess games. It becomes not just a space but a perception device that frames the rhythms of life between villagers and their surroundings. Through the lens of film and documentary-making, Zhang and her team documented these activities, constructing a narrative that redefines the plaza as a cultural storytelling medium. The result is a space where historical essence, communal memory, and modern creativity converge, crafting a new narrative of coexistence between past and present, architecture and anthropology, function and art.