No Name Art Museum / Atelier FCJZ
+ 86
- Area:
6060 m²
Year:
2021
Text description provided by the architects. Since a collection of Wu Dayu’s work may not be exhibited in this museum, the name Wu Dayu Art Museum has been discontinued. We use the No Name Art Museum as a temporary measure only. However, the design of this piece of architecture was heavily inspired by him.
Wu Dayu. Wu Dayu (1903-1988) was a painter, educator and poet and considered the founding father of Chinese abstract painting. He was born in Yixing, Jiangsu and went to France in 1922 to study oil painting and sculpture. After returning to China, he founded the National Academy of Art (now China Academy of Art) in Hangzhou together with Lin Fengmian and others and headed its Department of Western Paintings. Wu lost his teaching position in the 1950s and painted in a ten-square-meter attic at home until he died.
Our architectural design was influenced by the art of Wu Dayu. His search for ‘Li’ (strength) and ‘Ning’ (tranquility) in his small postcard-sized paintings prompted us to carefully contemplate the scale of architectural space. Wu’s poem, King Kongfurther vividly portrays the dynamism and volatility of architectural experience:
The shadow deceives the figure
Time laughs with space
No sound and no trace
I go in and out of the darkness of time
Time. Wu’s poem inspired us to explore the temporal dimension of architecture. Can time be projected? Borrowing the book of the French philosopher Francios Jullien In time for a theoretical guide, we compared the time of China and Europe. Classical Western Time: The observer is timeless; time and space are separate; time is evenly paced, divisible, unidirectional, with a beginning and an end. The past and the future are clearly defined but not the present. This is objective time. Traditional Chinese Time: The observer is within time; time and space cannot be separated; time changes, it is continuous and coming, without beginning and without end. This time is always present and can be named as subject time. The elasticity of Chinese time offers design possibilities.
The Case of the Nine-Turn Bridge: If a body of water can be crossed in 3 steps, with a nine-turn bridge, it can take 27 steps, which means the time is 9 times longer, hence the space feels much larger. big. We combined Chinese time and Western perspective and designed wedge-shaped spaces, including both programmed and pure: These spaces extend from the perspective in one direction and compress in the other; thus, the temporal-spatial perception changes with each movement of the visitor. It demonstrates the immeasurability of time and space and enriches the experience to the point where one can get lost and embark on a journey of discovery. The Wu Dayu Art Museum is a playground of space and time.
Space. The essence of an art museum is to provide a you or wandering experience. The spatial relationship naturally becomes the main focus of the design. Therefore, alongside perspective manipulation, we introduced the concept of “pure architectural space”: a series of outdoor or semi-outdoor spaces that serve as transitions between programs. They are configured to have dramatic tensions, intensifying the temporal and spatial dynamics during the process of a journey through the architecture. The general spatial structure of this building complex is arranged in yuan (courtyards) and Jin (layer), generating a dialogue with Chinese architectural traditions and superimposing another layer of experience on the perspective play.
Form. Attention to time-space experiences allows us to move away from static compositions, which means that the formal relationship between stereoscopic volumes and planar heights is dissolved. Here, the work of a Swedish architect, Sigurd Lewerentz, gave us great inspiration.
Structure. The structural system of this project is partly beamless concrete slab with irregularly shaped columns without beams and columns, and partly steel frame.
Regional culture + Material. In addition to the space, in our design we also pay tribute to the folk houses in Wuzhen, which is part of Jiangnan (south of the Yangtze River), in terms of material and color. Therefore, the use of clay tiles on the roof and concrete tiles on the walls, as well as the exposed concrete walls make for a rich and subtle black-white-grey color scheme. At this point, the landscape and interior construction of this facility remains incomplete.
