Shui Cultural Center Cultural Center by West-line Studio - Haobo Wei and Jingsong Xie is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2018 Silver A' Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Competition Category.
SilverArchitecture· 2018
Shui Cultural Center Cultural Center
by West-line Studio - Haobo Wei and Jingsong Xie
Client: West-line Studio
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Architecture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #63723The Design
About Shui Cultural Center Cultural Center
Located in China in Southern Guizhou Province, Shui Cultural Center is a gateway to Sandu County, the land of the Shui ethnic minority. West-line studio’s goal with this building was to turn the Shui’s ritual elements and atmosphere into a public space. A thin bronze skin creates a contrast with the heavy concrete structure, breaking the sunlight to create a dramatic effect once inside. After visitors pass the open water square the Cultural Center presents a succession of three spaces, strongly characterized by pitched roofs, which evoke the Shui’s mountain pictogram.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Shui Cultural Center Cultural Center is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Shui Cultural Center Cultural Center is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Shui Cultural Center Cultural Center is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Contemporary Vernacular Architecture Services
We specialize in contemporary architecture that honors regional culture and landscape in Southwest China. Our decade of experience in the Karst region allows us to create buildings that blend modern functionality with local traditions, materials, and cultural narratives.
Discuss Your ProjectBehind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Located in the Southern Guizhou Province, Shui Cultural Center is a gateway to Sandu County, the land of the Shui. It includes three main stripes, combining all the functions of the tourist-cultural center. With its iconic and distinct shape, it stands as an homage to the local culture and traditional architecture. The Shui culture is evoked using particular materials and shapes and recreating a ritual space, able to lead visitors into Shui’s ancestral world.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Area surface: 13,808.04 sqm
Building surface: 4,223.59 sqm
Building max height: 23 m
Tower height: 30 m - Tags
- China, Guizhou Province, West-line studio, Cultural Center, Shui Minority, Concrete Architecture, Chinese Architecture, Pitched Roof, Concrete, Bronze
- Production Technology
- 1. Fair-faced Concrete: strongly marked by a wooden pattern, given by the pine quarterdecks
2. Copper Steel Plates: twelve industrial processes recreate the peculiar texture of the bronze used in Shui minority’s ancient rituals
3. Colorful Transparent Glass: Shui Characters, mainly used during ceremonies and sacrifices, are printed on colored glasses, filtering the light and evoking a ritual atmosphere - Design Challenge
- The main challenge has been to turn those typical and ritual elements of Shui minority’s culture, together with the whole scenario they used to create during Bronze Age traditional rites, into a contemporary public space.
- Research
- The project focuses and researches on these main aspects:
1. Regional Connection: local peak-cluster landform
2. Public Life: contemporary public life model of Shui minority group in China
3. Ritual Atmosphere: bronze drums and altars used in Shui’s sacrifices
4. Lighting Atmosphere: filter Shui’s unique pictograms
5. Construction: handcrafted + industrial materials - Inspiration
- The Cultural Center is inspired by Shui minority sacrificial rites, where bronze drums and altars are regarded as symbols of power. The architecture also evokes Shui unique pictograms. From the outside, with its water square, it stands as an open memorial place. While inside visitors are immerged into an introverted ritual atmosphere.
- Project Duration
- Design: June 2016 - October 2016
Location: Guiyang, Guizhou Province, China
Construction: October 2016 - November 2017
Location: Sandu County, Guizhou Province, China - Operation Flow
- The building guides visitors step by step into Shui’s ritual world. Starting from the open water memorial square, behind which the building shines with its bronze perforated skin which remembers sacrificial altars. To the interiors strongly characterized by the sharp pitched roof, which aims to recreate an intimate dramatic atmosphere.
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to West-line Studio, 2017.
- Team Members
- - Design: Haobo Wei, Jingsong Xie
- Architecture and Landscape: Yudan Luo
- Site Construction Control: Haobo Wei, Minghua Ou
- Interior Design: Martina Muratori
- Structure: Yuanping Li, Xiaoqiang Yang
- Equipment: Hongbo Shi
- Research: Lanyu Xu, Danjing Zhong, Zhili Yin, Jing Shi, Yulan Xu
- Graphic: Martina Muratori, Jinda Zheng - Image Credits
- Photo: Jingsong Xie, Jinda Zheng
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