Bishan Bookstore by Yunhai Zhao is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Golden A' Design Award in Cultural Heritage and Culture Industry Design Competition Category.
GoldCultural Heritage· 2025
Bishan Bookstore
by Yunhai Zhao
Client: Yunhai Zhao
Golden A' Design Award Winner in Cultural Heritage Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #168111The Design
About Bishan Bookstore
Bishan is a bookstore set inside a former ancestral hall in Bishan Village, Yi County, Anhui. The hall, a Wang family shrine, was built more than 230 years ago during the Qing Dynasty. The project covers 420 square meters and adapts a protected historic building to present-day cultural use. Natural materials such as wood, bamboo and stone shape the interior, while the bookcase wall is finished in white rammed earth. Cement board supports the bookcase wall and limits damage caused by ground moisture. The form of the bookcase wall recalls painted screens and frames a central reading area.
The Recognition
About the Golden A' Design Award
Bishan Bookstore is a Golden A' Design Award winner, an immensely prestigious recognition granted to first-rate, marvelous, and outstanding designs. Golden winners are exceedingly innovative, visionary, and glamorously dazzling creations that reflect the prodigy, wisdom, and prowess of their designers. Bishan Bookstore is expected to be a highly praised, trendsetting, and monumental invention that delivers unprecedented value. This Golden A' Design Award-winning design is a spectacular, respected project that highly benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Bishan Bookstore creates intense feelings of desire, evokes passion, encourages creativity, and fascinates us.
Where to Get It
Heritage-Inspired Commercial Interior Design Services
We transform commercial spaces by harmonizing cultural heritage with contemporary functionality, creating environments that honor tradition while serving modern business needs. Our portfolio spans restaurants, hotels, retail, and cultural spaces across China and Singapore.
Request QuoteBehind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The Bishan Bookstore needs to have a clear business strategy and plan, which all need to be adapted to the changing consumption and needs of the times and to think with the times. If the market-oriented development of the space is hampered by over-protection, Bishan bookstore will become an exhibit for ornamental purposes only, and its value as a cultural container will be lost.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- This project covers an area of 420 square meters.
- Tags
- Huizhou culture, ancestral hall, traditional architecture, traditional crafts, bookstore
- Production Technology
- In addition to the patio, which faces nature, the interior also speaks the language of nature. Natural materials such as wood, bamboo, and stone are used to structure the interior itself. These materials not only have a natural beauty but also resonate with the environment. However, the bookcase wall uses a new material, white rammed earth material, which is used for the exterior wall material of the building.
- Design Challenge
- When Librairie Avant Garde listed the realistic problems to us one by one, we felt that the difficulty of this project was not just to solve these operational challenges,but how a heritage-protected building could find a balance between history and modernity, preserving the original characteristics of this family shrine while enabling it to adapt to the needs of modern society.
- Research
- In this small village, there is a Wang family shrine Qitai Hall, built in the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, more than 230 years ago. And this small ancestral hall, which has experienced countless hours of history, was injected with new blood in 2014 Librairie Avant Garde the eighth branch of Nanjing Librairie Avant Garde and the first bookstore in the countryside.
- Inspiration
- There is a Wang family shrine Qitai Hall, built in the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, more than 230 years ago. Librairie Avant Garde has been committed to rooting into the countryside, not for commercial needs, but for the dissemination of culture, so that those areas where it is most difficult to be able to read books have a cultural utopia gathered for the love of reading and books.
- Project Duration
- Project Address: Bishan Village, Yi County,Anhui
Completion date: December 2024 - Operation Flow
- First of all, the transformation of the bookcase is the core of the whole design, in order to reduce the damage to the bookcase caused by the humidity on the ground, the cement board is used to build the bookcase wall, and the bookcase is partially embedded. The form of the whole bookcase wall is inspired by the screen in Chinese painting, and the center area wrapped by three screens is the area for the daily activities of the literati. The screened bookcase recedes backward, drawing the viewer's eye toward the center of the picture.
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Yunhai Zhao
- Team Members
- Yunhai Zhao
- Image Credits
- Image #1:Photographer YunHai Zhao,Designer,2025.
Image #2:Photographer YunHai Zhao,Designer,2025.
Image #3:Photographer YunHai Zhao,Designer,2025.
Image #4:Photographer YunHai Zhao,Designer,2025.
Image #5:Photographer YunHai Zhao,Designer,2025.
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