Qujing Culture Center
Qujing, China
October 12, 2015
The Qujing Culture Center, situated by a man-made lake in a newly developed
district of Qujing city, contains some of China's oldest and most precious
artefacts, including a collection that dates back to the start of life on
earth.
Two impossible miracles
co-exist in the city of Qujing: the Longyan Tablet and a fish fossil over 400
million years old. While the Longyan Tablet marks the invention of a prominent
calligraphic style, the fish fossil rewrites geology in human history. The
archaeological relics are both metaphor and subject matter of the
project."/Atelier Alter
The main entrance, located on a vertical plaza, is defined by processional
steps and an echoing suspended roof. The graduate suspension of the enormous
roof is designed to offer an "anti-gravity" feel that reflects the
stairs below.
The strong presence of the void reinstates the gravitas of the museum's
subject matter, giving visitors the opportunity to experience the immensity of
space and time the city occupies. One end of the museum rests on a plinth
giving the impression it is floating.
Instead of assimilating
into analogies of the site - terrace field, fossil grain, or calligraphic
strokes - the formal expression of the architecture is in dialogue between the
concrete and the abstract, the familiar and the unfamiliar."
/Atelier Alter
