Silver Interior Space and Exhibition Design · 2022
Jinan Cultural Archives Center Library
by Muchuan Xu, Minxi Cai and Xin Yan
- A' Design Award 2022 Silver Winner in Interior Space and Exhibition Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: Vantree Design
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 16,479
- Verification code C2E44AA4EC · Verify this award
About Jinan Cultural Archives Center Library
Jinan Cultural Archives Center is a library interior located in the Lixia District of Jinan, Shandong Province. The library is one of eight venues within the cultural and archives center and occupies the second to fourth floors on the southwest side of the building. The design reorganizes circulation, adjusts the escalator position and reshapes the atrium edge. Glass partitions open views between areas and create a calm reading atmosphere. The result is a shared space where residents of different ages can read, meet and take part in cultural activities.
Muchuan Xu's Jinan Cultural Archives Center Library presents a compelling synthesis of contemporary minimalist sensibility with subtle references to traditional architectural vocabularies, creating an interior environment that elevates the functional requirements of archival storage into an experience of spatial poetry. The designer demonstrates exceptional command of material restraint, deploying a singular palette of warm-toned oak across expansive surfaces that unify walls, stairs, and shelving into one continuous wooden landscape. The distinctive chevron-profiled niches, each outlined with concealed illumination that appears to glow from within, transform utilitarian shelving into a rhythmic sculptural installation that activates the entire vertical expanse. This treatment suggests awareness of historical precedents ranging from classical library architecture to the bracket systems of East Asian timber construction, yet the execution achieves thoroughly contemporary clarity through its geometric precision and technological integration. The inclusion of a motion-blurred ascending figure introduces temporal dimension and human measure into the monumental composition, reminding viewers that such spaces exist ultimately for human engagement and intellectual pursuit. Light functions as a primary design material here, with the warm amber emanations from shelf interiors creating an atmosphere of welcoming invitation while the cool daylight from above provides necessary visual relief and orientation. The technical achievement lies in the seamless integration of lighting infrastructure within millwork details, evidence of careful coordination between architectural and interior disciplines. One might observe how the ascending diagonal of the staircase creates visual conversation with the leftward-pointing chevrons, establishing dynamic tension within an otherwise symmetrical arrangement. How does the warmth of material and light transform the potentially austere task of archival preservation into an invitation for contemplative discovery?
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The project is located in Lixia District of Jinan, Shandong Province, surrounded by cultural, educational and creative commercial resources. As one of the eight venues of the cultural and archives center, the library occupies the 2nd to 4th floors on the southwest side of the center. In order to provide residents of different ages with an emerging library model with a diversified human scale, we have built the library into a shared space.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Reconstruction means disassembling and reorganizing and restructuring. The structure is not limited to space, but also the reorganization of behavior and sight. In order to realize the creation of shared space, the public space of the existing building needs to be split, reorganized and adjusted, and the streamlines must be sorted out and adjusted.
- Tags
- shared knowledge, reconstruction, cultural carrier
- Production Technology
- In the library block, we analyze and reconstruct the original situation to find pointcuts. After clarifying the overall optimization direction, through the analysis of the functions and structure of the traditional library, the functions and streamlines’ relationships among them were reorganized and constructed.
On the second to fourth floors, we integrated the overall streamlines, adjusted the position of the escalator, pushed and pulled the edge of the library atrium without affecting the streamlines, and the use of glass perspective to reduce the urgency of reading space and enrich people's space experience. - Design Challenge
- NONE
- Project Duration
- The project started in September 2019 and finished in June 2021 in Jinan, Shandong Province.
- Operation Flow
- As a very iconic urban cultural building, we hope to create a center that gathers local residents. The library provides a place for residents to develop a good reading habit, and facilitates them to carry out various social, cultural, entertainment, and sports activities, and builds sharing community.
- Research
- As a very iconic urban cultural building, the designer hopes that this project can become a center that gathers local residents, which can provide people with different scales of communication and reading space, build a shared community, promote people's sharing and communication, and connect the future of the city. It will become a carrier for the spread of Jinan culture, inheriting traditions and having distinctive characteristics of the times.
- Inspiration
- In response to the theme of sharing and the trend of the era, we started from people's perception and experience, optimized the sight relationship in the space, placed space nodes, added functional spaces, reorganized people's social behavior, and promoted the realization of "shared knowledge".
- Image Credits
- Copyrights belong to Vantree Design.
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Vantree Design.
Colors of Jinan Cultural Archives Center Library
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