YIMING ZHOU
ACADEMIC WORKS 2022-23
SHEFFIELD SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
A SERIES OF ROOMS
A NEW ART GALLERY FOR KINGSTON UPON HULL
The new art gallery consists of a temporary exhibition gallery, a collection gallery for the maritime paintings by Hull-based artist John Ward, a viewing tower and gallery ancillary spaces. The project also involves the retrofit of a Georgian style house, which is integrated into the new build through a series of interconnected rooms.
The site for the new art gallery is located along the River Hull, which splits the city into two: an industrial landscape on the east and the historically developed urban fabric on the west. The design of the project identified these two different characteristics of the site.
A Journey to the River
Hull’s Maritime collection-John Ward Gallery
The opportunity of reconfiguring the existing building as the collection gallery was identified at early design stage, in response to the domestic scale of the paintings by the maritime artist John Ward, who was based in Hull in 19th century and famous for portraits of ships and vessels.
The door frames are lined up with the windows that opens to the river, in order to create the juxtaposition between the maritime past depicted in John Ward’s paintings and contemporary industrial landscape of the River Hull area. This takes reference to the Colonnade in Soane Museum, which is characterized by a careful use of light on either side and framing, which creates a sense of wandering to non-realistic places.
Cross-Section Through Sir John Soane’s Museum, 1835
Section through the existing building and the new tower
A Point of Arrival
From the city to the river
Approaching the gallery from the city, three volumes clad in bricks are articulated in a glimpse view through the continuous building frontage of Scale Lane. The celestory window on top of the corner marks a point of arrival from the city to the river, celebrating the civic character of the gallery building and leading to a riverside area behind the scenes of historical urban sitting of Hull.
South Elevation, 1:100
A City Gate
From the river to the city
Taking references to the ‘as found’ language of the industrial buildings along the River Hull area, the building is visually lightweight on the side facing the river, in order to create a formal connection to the industrial past of the city. The tower itself creates a collage of a series of framed views looking to the selected urban fragments as people moving through the tower rooms. Although the cityscape along the River Hull area continues to change in the coming decades, the tower remains as a metaphor of the industrial past of the city.
River Hull, 1970s
1, foyer 2, reception desk 3, courtyard 4, workshop space 5, sculpture garden 6, artist pavilion 7, staff office 8, lecture room 9, community gallery 10, bathrooms 11, cafe 12, bookshop 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 9 9 7 8 10 11 12 Ground Floor Plan, 1:100
ARCADE OF CRAFTS
A CRAFT MARKET ON HONDORI STREET, HIROSHIMA, JAPAN
The building functions as an internal street that is perpendicular to the high street of Hiroshima. It is proposed not as an extension of the Hondori shopping arcade, but as part of it. The shopping stalls are arranged in the way that they are encountered as shopping stores on the street, with their particular characteristics to be celebrated.
Things carry meanings. Drawing on references from the symbolic values of carp in Japanese culture, the carp streamers (Koinobori) hung from the ceiling and translucent canvas floating above the internal street symbolize the relationship between the carp and the waves. This arrangement also scales down the triple height space and creates a rhythm walking down the internal street.
References
Hamonshu: A Japanese
Book of Wave and Ripple
Designs by Mori Yuzan, 1903 (left)
A Fish Leaping out of the Water by O’Hara Koson, 1907 (right)
The Making of an Internal Street
The history of Hiroshima is fragmented and uncontinuous. In a city where the city, as a built form of collective memory, had been totally erased after the second world war, the making of a new internal street that inherits the characters of the historical high street has become a key concept in the development of the proposal.
The lily-of-the-valley lamp, once regarded as the symbol of Hondori street, has been brought back to restore the high street identity; the translucent canvas floating above the internal street is arranged to create a lively public space; the crafts are hung in a way that they become part of the structure.
Hondori Street, 1920s
Threshold, Gesture & Symbolism
Two columns standing at the north entrance, as part of the structural grids and reptitive elements along the internal street, have been specially designed to create a threshold space between the high street and the internal street. Two columns, together with the canopies wraped around, form an image of two ‘umbrellas’ standing on the Hondori street, a welcoming gesture to the people passing by.
Hondori Street, 1920s