ARCHITECTURE BOOKLET DESIGN

BASE ARCHITECTURE & CULTURE

Long Museum

Discovering The Urban Historical Spirit

Museum In China

ISSUE 2018

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FEATURE

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Editor’s Letter LISA CONTAG

China has seen some spectacular new museum openings in the recent past. A new exhibition at Berlin’s ANCB, The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory, Today we will takes a closer look at 2 cutting-edge examples. Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu’s and Lu Wenyu’s monolithic History Museum in Ningbo; the umbrella-like Long Museum in Shanghai

by Atelier Deshaus.

Presented as individual case studies with models, video interviews as well artistic interpretations by Chinese painter Yiming Liao, they make for a comprehensive survey that delves deeply into both the stunning aesthetics and formal solutions of contemporary Chinese museum architecture and its role as an agent of social and cultural progress.

While globalization is changing the faces of Chinese cities at a breathtaking speed, devouring entire century-old neighborhoods within weeks to replace them with uniformly shiny, often bombastic constructions, museum commissions have become a welcome opportunity for prolific Chinese architects to exercise bold gestures and strong statements. One powerful example is Wang Shu’s und Lu Wenyu’s above-mentioned History Museum in the city of Ningbo. Built from the rubble of demolished villages in the area, among other materials, and constructed by local artisans who used century-old techniques in the process, the monolithic structure physically embodies the history of the location it was created in and the people who have lived there. It is a symbol both of preservation and protective protest amidst a rapidly changing world.

Stunning as they are in their variety, it is the museums’ roles as such “drivers of progress within the socio-political and cultural landscape in China today”, as Aedes explains in a statement: “How is local and national identity defined by the museum design and curation? How does the museum function within the context of its local social and urban environment? Which form or shape was identified as being

most suitable?” are some of the questions it revolves around, while also considering global, digital, urban and demographic challenges.

FEATURE

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CONTENTS

COVER STORY

NingBo Museum The Building That Recasting History

Q&A

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Interview Wang Shu

“Memory is deeper than symbols”

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The Flanneur

Asking Ningbo Citizens What do you think?

HIGHLIGHT

Long Museum

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Discovering The Urban ‘historical spirit’

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Agenda

What’s on

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NingBo Museum The Building that Recasting History

BY Brendan McGetrick

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FEATURE

Fragments of Chinese history are conserved in the facades of this building conceived as a kind of artificial mountain.

“Ningbo’s government doesn’t fear to do risky things,” Wang Shu, the museum’s architect, told me when we met in his building. “When we first won the competition, some people were very angry. They said, ‘In the new, modern district you designed such an anti-modern building!’ but I think that’s not correct.” In the architect’s view, this critique is based on a constricting definition of modernity, one that places it in a winner-takes-all struggle with the past. For him, Modern is simply a division in a vast catalogue of materials and techniques at the designer’s disposal. Over the next hour, we explored his design, leisurely taking in the museum’s grand narrow courtyards, browsing its enormous collection of cultural relics. He described valley, caves, lakes. When we finally reached the museum’s high point, a platform where the building splits into five jagged pieces, he told me, “When I designed this, I was thinking of mountains.

I couldn’t design something for the

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he Ningbo Museum sits on a massive unpopulated plaza in Yinzhou, in a city with a 5,000-year history. In the distance, the silhouettes of newly built residential towers and half-finished office buildings imply a bustling future, but for the moment the area exists in a kind of temporal limbo – its past abandoned, its future not yet arrived.

At the north end of the plaza is a broad, grey stone building occupied by the district government. It is relentlessly in the typical style of municipal architecture in the PRC. It projects stability and strength both physically and symbolically: the building looks indestructible and the fact that the government resides in it reassures developers of the area’s viability. The museum, a three-story, 30,000-square-metre block positioned on the plaza’s northwestern edge, conveys the opposite. On approach, its form looks haphazard. It is apparently a box, but its sides are skewed and large chunks are missing. Its materials are inconsistent and ill-fitting. The facade is pocked with small, arbitrarily arranged windows that reveal nothing of the building’s contents. It is an awkward building, but next to the muscularity of the government offices, it conveys a vulnerability that is touching, almost heart-warming, as I approached the entrance I wondered whether this museum represents an entirely different sort of strength, the strength to embrace the unusual.

city, because there is no city here yet, I wanted to do something that had life. Finally I decided to design a mountain. It’s a part of tradition.”

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COVER STORY

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FEATURE

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COVER STORY

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hey often take the form of mimicry, as in the case of the Shanghai Museum, which emulates the shape of an ancient cooking vessel. By emphasis the inspiration he derives from nature, Wang Shu appears to align himself with frequently silly approach.

The Museum is connected to Chinese history in a much more fundamental way. Towards the end of our visit, Wang stopped in front of one of the museum’s inner walls. Large stretches of the building’s facade are composed of fragments of various sizes, shapes and materials, and after a brief appraisal, the architect began to annotate. He pointed to a grey brick about 20 centimetres wide. “This one was produced over 400 years ago – that’s the Ming Dynasty.

That is a very standard size. This one is from the Qing Dynasty. Some people have found older ones. The oldest one is from the Tang Dynasty – that’s 1,500 years ago.”

Most of the Ningbo Museum’s exterior is composed of debris collected from destruction sites around the region.

The pieces were assembled using a technique known as wapan, a method developed by the region’s farmers caused by typhoons. It is a system capable of accommodating a seemingly unlimited variety of source material, a system perfectly suited to the ill-fitting, mismatched pieces with which Wang had to work.

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FEATURE

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Most of the Ningbo Museum’s exterior is composed of debris collected from destruction sites around the region. ” -12-

COVER STORY

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FEATURE

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hough he had used this technique previously in his campus for China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, the Museum offered the first chance to apply wa pan in its place of origin. “Only the craftsmen in this area know how to do this,” he told me. “But if we don’t use it in architecture I think the craftsmen will forget how to do it. When we started, many couldn’t remember, so we had to use photos and teach them again.” He looked over the empty streets and endangered farmland that surrounds the museum and added, “We call this a ‘no memory area’. In this huge district I found only one village that was in tact, and maybe next year it will also be demolished. There is no tradition here. I designed this to try to bring their memory back.”

Wang Shu says that the design represents an intersection of “three valleys crossed by large stairways – two on the inside and one on the outside”. The internal walls (also in concrete) were moulded with bamboo canes as well. The use of this unusual technique, as with the use of wa pan for the walls, meant that the builders had to be specially trained: they had lost their own traditional knowledge. This unusual regained skill, however, now means that they are much in demand in their own market.

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COVER STORY

The south facade of the museum. The surfaces of the walls reveal the presence of over 20 different types of recycled tiles and bricks, which were recovered when the old villages were demolished

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Q&A

Wang Shu: “Memory is deeper than symbols” Interview By Anna Tweeddale

Wang Shu is a Chinese architect based in Hangzhou. He is the dean of the School of Architecture of the China Academy of Art. With his work partner and wife Lu Wenyu, they founded the firm Amateur Architecture Studio. In 2012, Wang became the first Chinese citizen to win the Pritzker Prize, the world’s top prize in architecture.

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INTERVIEW WANGSHU

Ningbo History Museum (2003-8), Ningbo, China. Photo by Lv Hengzhong

Obviously it has been a big transition from starting your small studio in 1998 to winning the Pritzker Prize in 2012. Can you describe the process?

Then in 1997 my wife and I decided we should have a more formal studio to do more complex work. So we had our studio in my home, in a very small apartment building. Importantly, in that time we made some more clear philosophies about how we were working, how we thought we could do it.

From the very beginning I thought I should control the studio to stay very small, because in the Chinese situation if you really want to do very experimental works you can’t let your studio get too big. There is too much pressure so I kept the studio very small. In the beginning we had two people – me and my wife [Lu Wenyu] – and then three people, four people. Now we have 10 people. I think it is enough.

I’m intrigued by the name of your practice, Amateur Architecture, and your statement that being an amateur is like being an artisan.

Can you tell me a bit more about this idea of ‘amateur architecture’?

Yes. In fact it has a special meaning for the Chinese situation. Architecture for China is very special – we have only had the professional architecture system for 80 years. Before this we had a great architectural tradition but our system was a no-architect system – it was a totally different thing.

But in the last 30 years you can see that China has had this really big change: very fast development, a huge amount of construction and people’s lives have gone through huge changes. So for architects I think it is a special time – you should keep some value, you should give some critical comment to the situation. We constructed huge amounts of ugly architecture over the past 30 years, so usually I say, ‘If professional architects can only do that sort of work, and it is so ugly, then I am an amateur architect.’

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Q&A

How should architecture contribute to the development of cities?

In fact China had a great tradition of cities – many, many beautiful cities – but in the past 30 years we have demolished more than 90 per cent of traditional cities. We have almost totally rebuilt a new country. Is this country’s name China? It’s just a new country. But the people also lost memory, tradition, lost history. So many cities just said ‘let the rubbish come in’.

Already so many beautiful cities are now like a big suburb. I say that it’s not really about city construction because this model is borrowed from the western world, from Hong Kong, from Singapore – it’s from some place with no tradition, no history of place. They borrowed this model and rebuilt, then from a city our cities became big suburbs, just a suburb with huge high-rise apartments and huge supermarkets.

Now people should rethink the city – what about the city’s life? We now have so many very wide roads with very fast speeds. But this doesn’t equal city life; these are not streets. Really, we built cities in the past 15 years so we should now think about direction, about the next step. Even the people that have lost memories actually say these things. They say that if we really lose our tradition we are no good.

There are some notable western cities where a similar process has happened, such as Venice, where sometimes the preservation and protection of tradition can also stop the life of the city from happening. How do you think we can learn to value the old without stifling the living?

I think the situation is different between China and Europe. I had many trips to Europe to visit everything from big cities to small cities. In Europe they also have their problems. For example, they do very good conservation of the traditional buildings, but on the other side they can’t build any new buildings in historic areas. But then in some new area you see the architects only build hard, polished, shiny modern buildings. They don’t build anything that can connect past experience to new things.

But in China it is different – we can do everything. It’s another situation. For the fast developments, the easiest way is to demolish, build new things – it’s cheaper, faster.

And then second, they do some conservation but they also demolish and then rebuild fake. It’s very funny: we have the real things, then we demolish them, and then we rebuild fake things. It’s really stupid, I think. For China the major problem is that in this big change, the people have lost their value system. They really have a lot of confusion. They think it is right. They don’t know, they really don’t know –they just want it fast.

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INTERVIEW WANGSHU

Ceramic House, Jinhua, China (2003-6).

Photo by Lv Hengzhong

How might future generations learn from this period in China’s history?

In fact, I also don’t know about next generation. I remember just 10 years ago I gave a lecture in Beijing as a young man. After my lecture some young students stood up in front of the class and they asked, ‘Why should we do Chinese architecture? Now we have become a member of the globe, why should we have to?’ In our education system, we in fact know almost nothing about tradition. In our life it’s just some very low-income level people that still have traditional living.

People have some feelings that are old, that we have such great tradition and long history, that we should do something about this culture. But then they just use this in some commercial way, some sign, some symbol, with no real feeling about tradition. Why should we talk about tradition in China? Because it is not just about tradition but because our traditional way is the more natural way, the more sustainable way, the more ecological way. We have not just lost our tradition, we have lost our way of thinking about this. This is more important, so that is why I talk about this to younger generations.

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Q&A

Perhaps it’s about habits and the actual everyday experience of living in certain ways in certain spaces.

Yes. You have to try some new approaches to this and connect to the people and then they can remember something. They can connect to their living habits, their memory to do some special things, to special atmospheres.

When I designed the Ningbo History Museum project, I researched the area. Originally they had 30 beautiful – very, very beautiful – villages. In this area of China, village is not ‘a village’. Every village is a beautiful small city, small town. But when they do the development it just left one town; 29 towns had been demolished. So I collected the material from these ruins and when the building was finished I found many local people visited three times, four times. Why? I spoke to them and I really got some feeling from this. For example, they said to me, ‘This wall, this part – it is very similar to my family’s courtyard.’ I really get some feeling, so it’s very encouraging to me.

Clearly this involves a whole different sense of time in design, in the process of collecting materials and sorting materials, experimenting and thinking about how to put them back together in a different way. I was wondering whether you can elaborate on how that affects your design process.

In fact this way is not my invention – it is a very typical traditional way in China. Really, you will find some ruins that people have just demolished, some old buildings, with material from many different times, some from years ago, some new. So I really understand from these things that our traditional way is a very natural and ecological way because, really, it was made with saved construction, the results of these materials. It’s a very good tradition. But now we use the medium of concrete instead so this tradition stops. We demolish so many buildings but the material is left like rubbish everywhere. It’s really a huge waste. So this is why I think I should do something about this, and I make contemporary architecture.

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INTERVIEW WANGSHU

Xiangshan Campus, China Academy of Art, Phase II, Hangzhou, .

Photo by Lv Hengzhong

What about the process of working with the client and with a builder, the logistics of collecting and storing materials? How does it all come together?

It’s very difficult because this way is a very traditional way – even the local craftsmen almost forgot how to do it. So for the client in China, really people just want new things, they don’t like old things on buildings.

Traditionally older was better, but now only new.

So we discuss with the client to establish this idea.

Usually I use the very simple ways. I do some small works before I do the huge works and I experiment with the materials for the construction. For example, how this traditional material can be constructed with concrete and steel together.

I don’t have any experience with this, so I thought we should do some experiment, I should teach this craftsman. In fact many times the craftsmen teach me how to do it. Usually the craftsmen say, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to do it because it is a new building – I just don’t know tradition.’ As for the collection of the materials, our tradition is very rich and varied. For example, just for bricks there are more than 80 different sizes – how to construct 80 different sizes of bricks and tiles together. It is a very amazing exercise.

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THE FLANEUR

Street Interview WHAT DO YOU THINK OF NINGBO MUSEUM?

“The museum is much more low-key than I expect, like a worn and dusty square box. I can only see a small wall and windows from a distance.

The facades of the brick and tile staggered, the windows look very messy, but it also maintains a certain harmony with the whole. It’s like the old courtyard of my grandmother’s house. Last time I went by, I saw Two old men sitting in the hall outside the bench chatting, both old and new buildings as the background have no molimen, comfortable leisurely. This

For the local residents, they really have contributed a lot to the museum. maybe there is a brick or a tile on the wall from our old home. they just changed a new look and quietly continue to exist in this city, that’s quite amazing. I was touched when I saw the wild grass growing on the museum’s roof. At that moment I truly feel that these brick tiles is to radiate vitality, to it as a building material for against wind and rain, not only for decoration and the formal of

scene really reminds me of grandma sitting in the yard and chatting with an old neighbor.

‘Heritage’ but the real vitality. just like the grass on my grandma’s roof. ”

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COVER STORY

“ I only have one principle: I want to do

something real with true feeling. Memory is deeper than symbols. The symbol is just about a concept, but memory is different. It can touch people and also touch veryprivate feelings, very small things, in time.

�

WANG SHU

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FEATURE

Discovering The Urban ‘historical spirit’ Shaped by the cultural currents of history and its physical remains, the industrial landscape of Suzhou Creek in Shanghai is now the site of a radical new art gallery.

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he Long Museum in Shanghai, speaks to an honest engineering aesthetic. Concrete shell, towering proportions, machine repetition, ribbed vaulting, geometric composition, factory functionalism: Behrens-esque.

It straddles a pre-existing, ’50s, heavy industrial, coal conveyor loading bridge, so it is tempting to describe the museum in Warholian terms as a production house of art. In fact, the motif is much simpler and much more

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rooted in the historic urban grain of the site. It is emblematic of the history of the city.

Shanghai is feted as the first modern city of China, opening up to foreign

trade after the first Opium War ended in 1843. Shanghai was, in Mao’s words, ‘a centre of despotic power’. So the next 30 years saw a rapid period of industrialisation and collectivisation without significant urban development.

HIGHLIGHT

Existing warehousing was converted and factories lined the waterfront as industry grew. After Mao’s death, the period of opening up embraced development, modernisation and capitalist dynamics. But questions are beginning to be asked about what was lost in the process, in terms of built heritage and urban memory.

This is the shifting context in which the museum sits: a huge modern construction on the site of an old coal dockyard adjoining the busy quayside. David Chipperfield’s maxim ‘architecture provides a sense of place in an increasingly confusing world’ is apt. The architects are adamant that the design of their building is not defined by its physical urban surroundings, but their architectural product is unmistakably a remembrance of things past. The recent strategic plan to revitalise this stretch of the river insists that developers place high importance on discovering waterway ‘historical spirit’.

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FEATURE

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o capturing the essence of industrialisation is the cultural and political generator of the design concept, but

the more prosaic remnants of the site’s industrial past played a significant part too, inasmuch as the site contained below-ground remnants of a structural grid comprising basement walls and large concrete stub columns at 8.4m

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centres. This, says the architect, was the ‘inevitable starting point of the design; an unavoidable restriction on

the design possibilities’. The question of whether architectural integrity giving rise to functional clarity is allied to structural honesty exercised the project team.

HIGHHIGHT

Architect: Atelier Deshaus Photographs: Su Shenglian

‘In the context of contemporary architecture that constantly turns to urbanism and society,’ Liu Yichun, director of Atelier Deshaus, explains, ‘we wanted to explore if there was any chance for construction to be independent, and to have a place of its own’. Thus ensued long arguments about the contradiction between rationality and architectural ontology or essentialism but the architects still wanted to create spaces where ‘new things could evolve’.

Despite the grid, the free-form plan has been premised on the non-proscriptive way that people use contemporary gallery spaces. Contrary to the proscriptive routes through many established galleries, ‘musing’ is now a preferred way of ‘using’ a contemporary gallery. Hence the idea of free-flowing spaces. Speaking of springing points, the concept of the arched roof structure arose from the process of making large-scale models.

Here, the architect uncovered the

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spatial and volumetric possibilities created by the structure: an ‘arc’ when aligned together, a ‘half arc’ when grouped together, or a ‘cross vault’ when described by the pinwheel layout.

An ‘umbrella’ cantilever was designed to span 8m independently, and though the project engineer approved it on paper, Shanghai’s seismic codes meant that a damper would have to be included between each umbrella to make it operate as a whole structure system.

In the end, cost and time restraints dictated that each umbrella would be linked by smaller beams allowing flexibility such that, in the words of the architect, ‘if small earthquakes occur, these connection beams would still fill their structural role, while in bigger earthquakes, these beams are designed to break’. Those considerations, seemingly purely technological, were necessary to ensure the structures’ free layout.

FEATURE

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COVER STORY

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FEATURE

The column supports are tied into the basement stubs and are provided with a central void for services. Similarly, the core of the arches comprises 200mm concrete with a void to house cables, air con, and so on. So the walls and ceilings are remarkably uncluttered.

Simple holes cut into the soffit allow single electric cables to connect to hanging light fittings. Smoke and fire detectors poke out of shared oval holes, partly recessed to minimise the visual intrusion. It is a pleasure to be in such an uncluttered environment that allows the art to speak for itself.

Liu refers back to the essential memory: ‘When we put people inside a building, the meaning of space suddenly no longer merely belongs to the structure. When we see an arch, in particular a huge arch or dome-shaped space, Rome comes to mind.’ As a result, early in the design process, the architect decided to visit Hadrian’s Villa near Rome specifically to study the conception of concrete vaulting to achieve a ‘classical quality’ in the finished building. It has helped Atelier Deshaus make a classic on a grand scale, aided by an almost spiritual light.

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HIGHHIGHT

Architect: Atelier Deshaus Photographs: Su Shenglian

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AGENDA

WHAT’S ON

Xiang Jing · Through No One’s Eyes But My Own

The Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection

Dates: 2017.12.16—2018.02.25

Dates: Sep 23, 2017 — Feb 25, 2018

Organizer: Long Museum West Bund

Organizer: Long Museum West Bund

Artist: Xiang Jing

Artist: Rembrandt, Vermeer

Xiang Jing is the first female artist to be given a large-scale solo exhibition at the Long Museum. “Xiang Jing: Through No One’s Eyes But My Own,”a comprehensive retrospective spanning over twenty-one years of her artistic output, opens at the Long Museum in December, 2017.

The 2017 exhibition program at the Long Museum will come to a perfect end with Xiang Jing’s exhibition.

The Leiden Collection and Long Museum (West Bund) announce the exhibition of masterpieces from the celebrated Leiden Collection, the largest and most important collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age in private hands.

The selections will comprise 12 works

by Rembrandt van Rijn, one painting

by Johannes Vermeer, and two por-

trait paintings by Frans Hals, as well as masterpieces by other artists from the period.

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EXHIBITION

Long Museum West Bund

Opening Hours: 10am~6pm, Tuesday-Sunday Closed on Mondays 3398 Longteng Avenue, Xuhui District Shanghai 021-64227636

Asian Impression: Chinese, Japanese and South Korean Contemporary Art Exhibition

The Delicate Beauty of PeonyPeony Figure Painted By The Court Painter Jiang Tingxi

Dates: Nov 5, 2017 — Feb 28, 2018

Dates: 2017.04.29—2018.02.25

Organizer: Long Museum West Bund

Organizer: Long Museum West Bund

Selecting artworks of representative artists from China, Japan and South Korea, this exhibition shall offer the visitors a splendid presentation of Asian contemporary art. Nurtured by ancient Chinese cultural legacy, the three Asian countries have long been intimately connected. This cultural homogeneity was shaken in the age of modernity which was dominated by the expansion of western civilization,

Prior to the official drawing, Jiang Tingxi first wrote “Peony Blossoms”, each peony also marked the main color characteristics, and then formally painted such as the first volume of the first open “double peace Pavilion”, that is, marked as white, The poem says: “Su Yunyun a new branch of the mirror on the mirror only the body of heaven and earth floor early jade, sea dual pavilion shop silver. Bi-sentence,

along with the tremendous impact of Western contemporary art.

never chant Taiping Spring “portrayed vivid description of Jiang Ting-tin can see the fine and love Peony deep.

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COVER STORY

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