Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio

Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Cityscape, WindowsXie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Image 3 of 45Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Image 4 of 45Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - FacadeXie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - More Images+ 40

Changsha Shi, China
  • Interior Design: Xi Li, Jingbo Li
  • Electromechanical Design: Shaoping Zheng, Yingjie Mao, Xiaoning Liang, Ning Zhang, Jian Liu
  • Architects In Charge: Chunyu Wei, Guang Zhang
  • Design Team: Xin Shen, Haili Liu, Yun Chen, Yueming Wen, Chen Tong, Rongrong Chen, Min Xiao, Jianhua Zhu
  • City: Changsha Shi
  • Country: China
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Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Cityscape
Urban Fragment. Image © Li Yao

Text description provided by the architects. Xie Zilong Photography Museum is built on the banks of the Xiangjiang River and within the Yanghu Wetland Park in Changsha. The base is just in the visual corridor of the Wetland Park connecting the Xiangjiang River scenery belt. It is a cultural and artistic highland built by the government. The photography museum, the Xiangjiang new district planning exhibition hall, which we have completed before (2009), and Li Zijian Art Museum (2016) constitutes the cultural living room of the citizens of Yanghu.

Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Cityscape, Windows
South Elevation. Image © Li Yao
Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Facade
North Elevation. Image © Li Yao

Based on the idea of complying with the value cognition system of "autonomy" of architecture, through the continuous research and practice of regional typology, this project explores the "archetype" in architectural ontology, and finds out the "psychological schema" behind it. In addition, with the influence of Giorgio de Chirico's metaphysical painting, we were trying to find out the implicit logic behind the formal language-"type archetype-deep structure-psychological schemata" under the social prospect of pursuing splendor and representation. And will be integrated into the design of "Xie Zilong Photography Museum ". 

Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Windows
West Elevation. Image © Li Yao
Ground Floor Plan
Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Image 30 of 45
A Place with a Skylight. Image © Li Yao

The metaphysical painting of Chirico is the meditation of eternity, through the“light and shadow”, the picture diffuses mysterious spaciousness and profundity, profound sense of tranquility. The design of the museum use the familiar objects in daily life to metaphorize and construct a maze of time stagnation, which guiding viewers to pay close attention to alienated strangeness. Directed at the huge cone tower in the sky, the truncated streets suspended in mid-air, a fork in the road that leads nowhere, the cycle of reciprocation, and the mysterious ramp that staggered to look out......

Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Facade
The Path Intersection. Image © Li Yao
Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Image 11 of 45
Entrance Platform. Image © Li Yao

Some of the elements appear many times in similar but in alienated forms, that all together create a strange feeling of time stagnation, eventually people got lost. The white warm fair-faced concrete wall makes the spatial structure of the building show the most essential neutral condition, highlighting the mystery of the material. The spatial depth gradually emerges through light and shadow, intertwined with the memory. The maze is an ambiguity metaphor that refers to the lost place as well as the fascinating and intoxicated place.

Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Image 3 of 45
© Li Yao

The main body of the building is one-off cast of white fair-faced in-situ concrete, no matter the wall, ceiling, ground or outdoor square, platform, trestle that only use the same material of fair-faced concrete. This construction itself is transcendent. In order to pursue the quality and performance of fair-faced concrete, a large number of samples were made in the early stage of construction. Sample wall and white concrete grading test: use high quality white cement instead of traditional Portland cement as the main gelled material, select white or light color sand as aggregator. At the same time, the active mineral admixture which has great influence on the whiteness of concrete, such as fly ash and mineral powder, is eliminated.

Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Concrete
© Li Yao

A series of improved tests have made the whiteness of concrete up to even exceed the international standard of 88%. It is the whitest fair-faced concrete building in China. The image hall materials deliberately pursue white, white as a concept. It can reduce the interference of the inherent color of the material to the other components in the space and not lose the texture of the fair-concrete itself. White is still the expression of "empty" to some extent, which not only emphasizes the art in the museum, but also reserves more thinking space and possibility for the choice of art.

Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio - Facade
© Li Yao

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Project location

Address:2 Lushan S Rd, Yuelu Qu, Changsha Shi, Hunan Sheng, China

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Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.
About this office
Cite: "Xie Zilong Photography Museum / WCY Regional Studio" 15 Jan 2018. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/886874/xie-zilong-photography-museum-regional-studio> ISSN 0719-8884

Northeast Perspective. Image © Li Yao

谢子龙影像艺术馆 / 地方工作室

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