Miniature Series II: Library in Ruins / ATELIER XI

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Text description provided by the architects. In the beginning, the architect received the original commission to design a 300-square-meter public building for facilitating the county’s culture and art education in Xiuwu, Henan. However, considering the vast serving area (630-square-kilometer county area) and the difficulty of traveling between scattered villages, the architect came up with a proposal to divide one building into a series of miniature facilities in different locations so as to better serve local communities. These cast-in-place concrete miniatures are interpreted into a series of tree-shaped spaces with tentacles reaching out for the sky, bathing in light and shadow. Their locations vary from fields, woods, to mountaintops, and their forms differ as well: while one grows out from the ruined walls in an abandoned village, another embodies a floating theater on the water. Following the first completed "Peach Hut", the second episode of the miniature series, "Library in Ruins", is constructed alongside the remnant of an adobe house in Sunyao Old Village which is 20 kilometers away from the Peach Hut.