HIPERCROQUIS

Design: 2007-2008

Construction: 2008.04 - 2008.11

Location: Qing Cheng Shan, Sichuan, China

Related Links:
Studio Pei-Zhu
Yue Minjun

Art Museum of Yue Minjun

On one hand, there are fantastic landscapes for Qingcheng Mountain, with continuous brooks and wreathed mist…

On the other hand, there are private art galleries, with extremely personal art attitudes and contemporary features…

When tracing back to ancient times and dreaming of future, we find two contrary propositions that meet and collide in Qingcheng Mountain.

What type of architecture language can be used to tell such incompatible and interesting encounter?

Not far away, Dujiang Weir, with more than 2000 years of history, has been witnessing the thought of “complying with nature and combining human and nature” and also fostering a special natural and cultural environment for this area. In this project, we try to talk with nature in an inheritance way and try to create a medium to overlap reality and imagination, nature and technology, tradition and future which seem to be contrary.

The art museum, located by the Shimeng River, is designed into an organic form full of smoothness and diversity, reflecting a cobblestone taken from the river. A light metal coating is applied to this ancient natural form, mildly reflects surrounding scenes and melts into nature, which is like a piece of concealed clothes and full of sense of future, making the building suspend over the ground and be like a flying body from the future. Therefore, we present an art museum which features artists’ direct and affirmed personal attitudes, participating in nature in a “lost” way and starts a secret dialogue with ancient times through a language of future.

Project Team
Architect: Pei Zhu, Tong Wu
Associates in Charge: Zeng Xiaoming
Design Team: He Fan, Jiao Chongxia, Li Yongquan, Jiao Chongxia, Fan Xuelan
Structural Consultant: Rory McGowan(Arup)
Photographer: Fang Zhenning

Studio Pei-Zhu
Studio Pei-Zhu is a young practice of under 20 employees based in Beijing. For us, the challenge of design is to provide practical solutions while reflecting a strong and innovative conceptual thinking and a critical outlook.

Our projects, therefore, are an exploration of methods to connect process to product.

The framework for this investigation and the experimental nature of our work is formed by the context in which it takes place - Urban China. The recent rapid development of the country has created new urban environments that can certainly be described as modern but lack the vitality and soul of older districts. One of our main concerns in design is to reconnect modern urban china to its roots, reinterpreting the vernacular in a contemporary context to create architectural devices capable of energizing urban activities. In this way we hope to contribute to a regional variance of contemporary architecture appropriate to its local context.

Awards 2007 Design Vanguard, Architectural Record
2006 China Award, Architectural Record
2004 WA China Architectural Prize
2003 China Architectural Arts Award
1989 Award of Special Merit from UNESCO

Exhibition 2008 Solo exhibition RISD, University of Rhode Island, N.Y.
2008 China Construction, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, N.Y.
2008 Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Architecture, Paris
2008 Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Architecture, Barcelona
2007 China Production, Austria
2008 China Design Now, Victoria and Albert Museum, UK
2007 Xisi Bei International Invitation Exhibition, China
2006 1st Biennale of the Architecture and Art of the Canary Islands, Spain?participated together with Rem Koolhaas and MVRDV?
2006 Chinese contemporary architecture, Rotterdam, Netherlands Architecture Institute

Projects & competitions 2007 Guggenheim museum Beijing, for Guggenheim Foundation
2007 Guggenheim Art Pavilion Abu Dhabi, for Guggenheim Foundation
2007 Courtyard House Renovation for artist Cai Guoqiang
2004 Digital Beijing, an Olympic project for 2008, Beijing, won the first prize in national design competition

[via archinect]