Liling Ceramic Art City

October 05. 2015

Hunan, China

Liling Ceramic Art City is a new city section entirely devoted to ceramic art. Not a regular city, but a special city, where the relationship between architecture, urban space, the material made by the

company and industrial tradition merge into one. This is why our project started from examining exactly which products and ceramic materials have been, and are now made in this area, to highlight their features, differences in color and workmanship."

Liling is a county-level city, known for its traditional porcelain and firework industries, in the Hunan province of China.  

The concept for the Liling design was inspired by the client, a leading producer of ceramic materials, who wanted to site a museum and a hotel in this industrial ceramics processing area. The designed buildings seek to spotlight its features and varied colors and production styles.

The entrance gate leads to the project's core, an open square which is surrounded by a hotel, restaurants and three museums (two about calligraphy and one about ceramics). Residences and commercial services are located in the north-east area. All the buildings are connected via 

Key to the design was the shaping of the buildings like great "vases" with soft contours and no sharp edges. They are always concave or convex and clad with polychrome ceramic modules, creating original three-dimensional textures.  

We think that a city like this should give visitors the impression of being in a place like no other, not just in the midst of buildings, but in the midst of high quality industrial production. Ceramics are essentially vases, containers. The buildings themselves become containers. Between them, a relationship forms, so that ceramic pieces are like buildings that people move around. This means that the container - vase and container - city/building merge into one."

We started from a detailed study of the juxtaposition and combination of these parts, seeking to envision a city section that could be flexible, with interchangeable parts, where the spaces could be an evocative sequence in which visitors are in the "between" space, having an experience of being in between the city space. This is a city with pedestrian streets where pedestrians can go in the spaces waiting to be discovered. Within these places, there are additional spaces focused on ceramic arts, intended to teach this great tradition of making and decorating ceramics works."