Articles by July Shao

Shunchang Museum is located in a county that features a unique location. As approaching the project, the architects studied the internal connection between the site and the city, balanced the local context with metaphorical creation, and worked to let the building integrate into local citizens’ daily life and carry the memory of those who’re residing in places far away from their hometown. Designed in response to local context and based on a people-centered principle, the museum is not merely a space that collects and displays exhibits. For the city where it sits, the museum itself is an exhibit, platform, and symbol. It carries the nostalgic sentiments of local people and interprets the past and future of local culture. The project is located in Shunchang County, Nanping City in Fujian Province. Shunchang is surrounded by mountains, with Futun Stream passing through. The museum is sited in a core urban area, with its south side facing Longshan Mountain across a road and overlooking the Monument to People’s Heroes in the distance, and the north side adjoining a waterfront walking trail along Futun Stream. The plot stretches in an east-west direction, with a limited depth in the south-north direction. Featuring a spindle-like shape, it sits in between mountains and water. The programs of the project mainly include a museum, an urban planning exhibition center, office rooms, and cultural relics storerooms. Meanwhile, with consideration of the operation of this venue, the architects engaged in functional planning and positioning and added some extra functions such as an auditorium, book bar, and cafe. As a common county-level museum, Shunchang Museum accommodates no key well-known collections, so the entry point and focus of the architectural design was shifted to let the building integrate into citizens’ daily life and carry the memory and nostalgic sentiments of locals especially those leaving their hometown. This place embraces the view of mountain and water landscapes and evokes a sense of nostalgia.

Usually, the particularity and complexity of the site also constitute the front label of the building. This design object is the Yunlong Mountain Meditation Hotel, Xuzhou, which is located on the axis of worshiping Buddha in Xinghua Temple. It has a natural tranquil atmosphere and a superior landscape vision. The operator hopes that the hotel can provide accommodation and commercial support for the worshiping Buddha meditation guests. Under this background, our intervention strategy for this site is to first consider following the original environment, then integrating into it, and finally creating a new “order”.

Banyan Tree Nanjing Garden Expo is a luxury hotel located on Tangshan Mountain, which was once a paradise dense with clouds and mists. However, the exploitation and destruction by humans have stripped its vegetation, changed the geography, eroded the soil, and damaged the landscape, turning Tangshan Mountain into devastated industrial ruins. It has become imperative to beautify and restore the site to enable the symbiosis of humans and nature.

“I was very impressed by the village. It was quite beautiful. The weather was mostly cloudy when I visited there, with a bit misty and foggy air surrounding the entire village.”

1. Organization

Fengyuzhu Metaverse Digital Art Museum is a virtual art world open to M generation users, which is created by Fengyuzhu on Xirang, a metaverse platform of Baidu. As one of the cultural facilities cluster of Fengyuzhu metaverse, the museum carries out 3D design and development based on virtual engine. In the future, it will introduce top-notch digital artists at home and abroad. Users can enjoy immersive exhibition viewing, entertainment, social networking, and also buy digital art collections there. The opening exhibition of the museum is now under planning.

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