Hasta La Ideas

New York architect Steven Holl has released two movies about the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, China, a building designed to recreate the “parallel perspectives” that are characteristic of Chinese landscape paintings.

The first of the two movies depicts a typical day at the museum, which is located at the entrance to an architectural complex within the Laoshan National Forest Park. The second is a guided tour from Steven Holl that explains how he and collaborating Chinese architect Li Hu came up with the design.

According to Holl, the building was designed as a sequence of walls that angle in different directions to confuse a visitor’s sense of perspective.

“It gives you a feeling of mystery about the space. It’s not really clear what’s parallel to what,” he says. “This had to be worked out on the site. We had to actually position these walls while standing and manipulating the space on the site, that was the only way it could be done.”

The concept to create “parallel perspectives” around the building was inspired by the Chinese artists who rejected the single-point-perspective approach of Western painters in favour of images that allow the viewer to travel between vistas.

“The first drawings were about the courtyard,” says Holl. “You can see the way the landscape is organised in these parallel perspective walls, creating conditions where there’s not really the sense of a vanishing point but there’s a kind of a sense of warping the space.”

The base of the building is a black concrete volume surrounded by walls imprinted with the texture of bamboo, while the upper section is an illuminated glass tunnel raised up on columns. It is surrounded by a landscape of fields and pools.

“This landscape comes down to an edge, but the edge isn’t quite yet the building because there’s this edge of bamboo against a freestanding wall which also creates an ante space before you get to the condition of the parallel perspective,” says Holl.

Galleries are located on all three floors of the building, creating places for displaying contemporary art and sculpture. “The condition of space isn’t exactly box-like, but it is more or less orthogonal and that gives a good background for the art,” added the architect.

Movies were produced by Spirit of Space. Photography is by Xia Zhi.

Here’s some extra information from Steven Holl Architects:

Steven Holl Architects presents two films on the Sifang Art Museum

Steven Holl Architects in collaboration with Spirit of Space has created two short films on the Sifang Art Museum, which opened in November 2013 in Nanjing, China.

The film series explores the changing perspectives as visitors move through the new Sifang Art Museum, from the lush green landscape of the Pearl Spring near Nanjing, through the Museum’s entry court and lower gallery, to its floating upper gallery. The film, A Conversation with Steven Holl, presents Steven Holl on site, as he explains the design concept for the new building.

Designed by Steven Holl with Li Hu, the Sifang Art Museum explores the shifting viewpoints, layers of space, and expanses of mist and water, which characterise the deep alternating spatial mysteries of the composition of Chinese painting. The museum is formed by a “field” of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in black bamboo-formed concrete over which a light “figure” hovers. The straight passages on the ground level gradually turn into the winding passage of the gallery above. Suspended high in the air, the upper gallery unwraps in a clockwise turning sequence and culminates at “in-position” viewing of the city of Nanjing in the distance. This visual axis creates a link back to the great Ming Dynasty capital city.

The courtyard is paved in recycled Old Hutong bricks from the destroyed courtyards in the centre of Nanjing. Limiting the colours of the museum to black and white connects it to ancient Chinese paintings, but also gives a background to feature the colours and textures of the artwork and architecture exhibited within. Bamboo, previously growing on the site, has been used in bamboo-formed concrete, with a black penetrating stain. The museum is heated and cooled by geothermal wells, and features a storm water recycling system.

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of mystery” says Steven Holl appeared first on Dezeen.

Art galleries are held inside an illuminated glass tunnel and balanced high above the ground at this museum by Steven Holl, the centrepiece of an architecture complex in a forest near Nanjing, China.

Set to open later this year, the Nanjing Sifang Art Museum forms part of the Chinese International Practical Exhibition of Architecture (CIPEA) programme that will see buildings by both Chinese and foreign architects populate a site within the Laoshan National Forest Park. As well as the museum by Steven Holl, the park will feature a conference centre by Arata Isozaki, a hotel by Liu Jiakun, a leisure centre by the late Ettore Sottsass and a total of 20 houses.

The museum sits at the entrance to the park. Formed of two halves, the building has a two-storey black concrete base that is partially submerged into the site and a translucent glass upper level that is suspended above on a set of chunky columns.

Galleries will occupy all three floors of the building, providing a new home for the Nanjing 4Cube Museum of Contemporary Art. Exhibitions on the lower levels will be accommodated in a series of separate rooms, while on the top floor artworks can be displayed in a continuous sequence that finishes with a view towards Nanjing’s city skyline.

Holl was interested in the difference in the use of perspective between Western and Chinese painting when designing the jolting snake-like form of the building. “The museum is formed by a ‘field’ of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls […] over which a light ‘figure’ hovers,” says the studio.

A monochrome colour palette was used throughout. The black tones of the concrete are stains left by its bamboo formwork, which has also left a ridged texture.

A courtyard is contained at the centre of the plan and features paving stones recycled from old hutong neighbourhoods in Nanjing.

The CIPEA project was first conceived back in 2003 as a showcase of modern architecture. Many of the buildings are set to open later this year and even the houses will be used as galleries, meant to be visited but not inhabited. See pictures of Blockhouse by Zhang Lei of AZL Architects in our earlier story.

Other recent projects in China by Steven Holl include the Sliced Porosity Block mixed-use complex in Chengdu and proposals for a pair of museums in Tianjin, with one the inverse of the other. See more architecture by Steven Holl on Dezeen.

Photography is by Sifang Art Museum, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Here are more details from Steven Holl Architects:

Nanjing Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China
2003 – 2013

Perspective is the fundamental historic difference between Western and Chinese painting. After the 13th Century, Western painting developed vanishing points in fixed perspective. Chinese painters, although aware of perspective, rejected the single-vanishing point method, instead producing landscapes with “parallel perspectives” in which the viewer travels within the painting.

The new museum is sited at the gateway to the Contemporary International Practical Exhibition of Architecture in the lush green landscape of the Pearl Spring near Nanjing, China. The museum explores the shifting viewpoints, layers of space, and expanses of mist and water, which characterize the deep alternating spatial mysteries of early Chinese painting. The museum is formed by a “field” of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in black bamboo-formed concrete over which a light “figure” hovers. The straight passages on the ground level gradually turn into the winding passage of the figure above. The upper gallery, suspended high in the air, unwraps in a clockwise turning sequence and culminates at “in-position” viewing of the city of Nanjing in the distance. The meaning of this rural site becomes urban through this visual axis to the great Ming Dynasty capital city, Nanjing.

The courtyard is paved in recycled Old Hutong bricks from the destroyed courtyards in the center of Nanjing. Limiting the colors of the museum to black and white connects it to the ancient paintings, but also gives a background to feature the colors and textures of the artwork and architecture to be exhibited within. Bamboo, previously growing on the site, has been used in bamboo-formed concrete, with a black penetrating stain. The museum has geothermal cooling and heating, and recycled storm water.

Client: Nanjing Foshou Lake Architecture and Art Developments Ltd
Architect: Steven Holl Architects
Associate architects: Architectural Design Institute, Nanjing University
Structural consultant: Guy Nordenson and Associates
Lighting design: L’Observatoire International

Construction period: February 2005 –
Program: museum complex with galleries, tea room, bookstore and a curator’s residence
Building area: 2787 sqm (30,000 sqf)

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