Press Release
Bishan Bookstore by Yunhai Zhao Wins the Golden A' Design Award in Cultural Heritage and Culture Industry Design
Yunhai Zhao honored for cultural heritage and culture industry design by the international grand jury of the 2024 - 2025 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 18, 2025 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has confirmed the Golden A' Design Award in the Cultural Heritage and Culture Industry Design category for Bishan Bookstore by Yunhai Zhao. The award was conferred within the 2024 - 2025 A' Design Award & Competition and was decided through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who evaluated anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
What the Golden A' Design Award Means
The Gold A' Design Award is granted to designs that demonstrate a high level of innovation and a significant impact on their intended audience. Recognized as a major achievement by the A' Design Awards, these designs are characterized by their visionary approach and the exceptional skill of their creators. Winners of the Gold A' Design Award are noted for their ability to push the envelope in art, science, design, and technology, delivering solutions that not only meet but exceed expectations. These designs serve as benchmarks for excellence, encouraging further innovation and inspiring future generations of designers.
More 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.
About Yunhai Zhao
Cloud Ocean Design Co., Ltd (China,Singapore) was established in nanjing, China in 2016. The company's address is selected in nanjing, as an ancient capital of six dynasties and a city with a strong culture. The company reconstructs the culture as the precipitation and takes it as the breakthrough point to make more design works beyond the traditional meaning in the city of nanjing. The design field involves the dining space design, the commercial space design, the office space design as well as the real estate project and so on.
Award Record
Yunhai Zhao is a winner of 3 A' Design Awards, including this recognition. The awards span the editions from 2018 - 2019 to 2024 - 2025 of the A' Design Award & Competition.
About the A' Cultural Heritage and Culture Industry Design Award
The A' Cultural Heritage Design Award is an international design competition recognizing good designs that preserve, protect, and promote cultural heritage. The competition is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to cultural heritage designers, culture industry professionals, cultural heritage specialists and museum designers from all countries. Entries typically include cultural heritage projects, cultural conversation, preservation and restoration and protection projects. Awarded cultural heritage designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/cultural-heritage
About A' Design Award & Competition
A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade organized annually since 2008. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The A' Design Award has a philanthropic mission to advance society through good design by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Entries are peer reviewed and anonymously evaluated by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. The A' Design Prize granted to eligible laureates includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, the upload of a work and the preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. Further information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/168111
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/168111
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!168111
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/236598
- Further Information from the Laureate: https://shorturl.at/2FuJR
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Bishan Bookstore
- Function
- Bookstore
- Category
- Cultural Heritage and Culture Industry Design
- Discipline
- Communication Design
- Industry
- Arts and Social Impact
- Colors
- Black, Dark Slate Gray, Cornflower Blue, Dark Olive Green and Dim Gray
- Images
- 5
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Yunhai Zhao
- Country
- China
- Recognition
- Golden A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2024 - 2025
- Design ID
- #168111
Credits
- Image Credits
- Photographer YunHai Zhao,Designer,2025.
Design Details
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Realization and 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.
- Operation and Interaction
- 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.
- Project Duration and Location
- Project Address: Bishan Village, Yi County,Anhui Completion date: December 2024
- Specifications
- This project covers an area of 420 square meters.
- Keywords
- Huizhou culture, ancestral hall, traditional architecture, traditional crafts, bookstore
