yinjispace

ARCHITECTURE
Signyan Design
INTERIOR
Signyan Design
LANDSCAPE
Signyan Design
PHOTOGRAPHY
Jonathan Leijonhufvud
EDITOR
Bingyi
Collection

"Kaipuu," derived from Finnish, expresses a "strong longing for lands one has never set foot on." The word "kaipuu" itself means "longing" or "yearning."On the coast of Quanzhou Jinjiang, Xie Ke weaves a narrative of tranquility and intensity, evoking a yearning for the "beyond the everyday" amidst the rocks and waves, guiding one towards an inner sea.

On the coastline of Weitou, Jinjiang in Quanzhou, Xie Ke and his team completed the interior design of Kaipuu on the Reef last year. Drawing upon the native environment, they brought nature seamlessly into the heart of the spatial narrative, creating an atmosphere of tranquility and strength that reflects the Kaipuu brand’s philosophy of embracing the present in travel.

Yet this narrative does not end with Kaipuu on the Reef. On the reef beside it, a white building facing the sea has now emerged — the Healer Cafe. It echoes the spirit of the hotel, yet stands as its own chapter, allowing people to experience the story of Kaipuu closer to the tides and the sea breeze.

Standing by the sea, this three-story white building is not an annex to the hotel, but rather an extension of its spatial narrative — a theater grown out of the landscape itself.

The building has three levels, with access from the lawn on the third floor and the beach on the first. The ground-floor café faces a crescent-shaped bay, like a retreat hidden in the reef. Shell and conch fragments are set into the wall finishes, while the window patterns echo Quanzhou’s traditional houses, touched with a Southern European ease. The second floor holds service functions, quietly embedded between the everyday and the ceremonial. The third floor serves as an art gallery or a private dining space.

The Healer Cafe faces the frontline coast of Weitou, Jinjiang — one of the starting points of the Maritime Silk Road, a place shaped by both layered history and shifting natural forces. The spirit of this land resists a single definition: it carries the weight of time while constantly being reshaped by nature. The white building takes its cue from this complexity — to sense it, to let the space respond to both nature and history, while avoiding any deliberate “carving” or replication of fixed cultural symbols.

Xie Ke takes “sea” and “stone” as the guiding threads, allowing nature to speak as much as possible, with design becoming a whisper within the space. As weather shifts and moments of the day unfold, the seascape and the rhythm of light shape and perform the atmosphere. In this way, the natural forms of Jinjiang and the embodied experience of people become a response to the locality. 

The circulation is designed to keep the desire for exploration alive. The space moves between indoors and outdoors, shifting from open views to quiet corners, bringing with it a sense of uncertainty and surprise. What the design opens is not a fixed answer, but a state of perception — inviting those who arrive to wander, to imagine, and to feel through constant discovery.

In his work, Xie Ke seeks a symbiosis between design and nature, creating spaces where landscape and art complement each other. Through different “framed views,” the three bays of Quanzhou open their embrace to travelers, carrying with them the breath of the sea. Here, people find shelter and encounter the poetic beauty that rises from the reef.

Climbing to the rooftop, the space opens wide. It serves both as a ceremonial area and as a garden terrace, where the outdoor seating extends to the roof’s edge, merging with plants and the sea view. Natural light pours through perforated screens, casting patterns across walls and floors like an unfurling canvas. The building’s sense of spirit is hidden within the path of the light.

The material palette is always restrained and simple — stacked stone, natural stone, wood surfaces, and plain white walls — creating an atmosphere that requires no ornamentation, leaving the stage to nature, the sea, and the sky.

The Reef White House is a “theater” by the sea, a space that speaks as its own narrator, waiting for different people to inscribe new chapters within it. It is also like a white lighthouse gazing out over the ocean from the shore. People need a sense of ritual — not as an extension of the everyday, but as a place where they enter into a covenant with nature and with their own inner selves.

From the Yiji Gallery to “49” in Qingshan Village, Dali, and from Kaipuu on the Reef to the Healer Cafe, curatorial thinking has consistently run through Xie Ke’s practice across different contexts. It is neither a matter of exhibition techniques nor of simple spatial decoration, but a way of thinking about narrative and rhythm: allowing nature and history to speak, letting order serve perception, and guiding people into deeper states as the space unfolds layer by layer. 

All expressions, while continuing the local fabric, extend a more open invitation — to wander, to experience, to let the emotions of the present and the past intertwine. Only by resonating with a place through feeling can one truly touch the meaning of the “faraway.”

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