Mulberry Ponds

Mulberry Ponds is a permanent seating installation in Yannan Village, Foshan, designed by Studio Boris Maas in collaboration with MVRDV for the Guangdong Nanhai Art Field Festival. The work is part of Chair With You, a programme developing permanent seating spaces across twelve water villages in the Pearl River Delta.

Yannan Village is situated within an ancient UNESCO-protected landscape of mulberry trees and fishponds, where trees, silkworms, and fish farming form a single ecological system. The irregular shapes of these ponds provided the starting point for five sculptural seating objects, each directly based on the footprint of a pond near the site.

The colours draw from the water and surrounding vegetation. Three objects have a matte concrete finish, while two have mirrored surfaces that capture and distort the light and landscape.

Together, the objects create an informal meeting place for residents, children, and visitors. The installation translates the surrounding landscape into an everyday gesture: sitting. A site-specific work that could exist nowhere else.

Year
2026
Material
Concrete in three colourways; electroplated finish in two colourways
Mulberry Ponds, blue and green seating objects under banyan trees
Mulberry Ponds, fishpond and tree-lined bank in Yannan Village
Mulberry Ponds, visitors sitting on the seating objects by the water
Mulberry Ponds, a child sitting on one of the seating objects along the brick path
Mulberry Ponds, passers-by beside a pale green seating object
Mulberry Ponds, textured blue and green surfaces
Mulberry Ponds, close-up of the hammered green finish
Mulberry Ponds, dark seating object with textured surface on gravel
Mulberry Ponds, close-up of the pale textured surface

Work