Gold Interior Space and Exhibition Design · 2021
Pingshan Cultural Cluster Book Mall Bookstore
by Jiang and Associates Creative Design
- A' Design Award 2021 Gold Winner in Interior Space and Exhibition Design
- Awarded April 15, 2021
- CLIENT: Jiang & Associates Creative Design
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 19,748
- Verification code C6B376066E · Verify this award
About Pingshan Cultural Cluster Book Mall Bookstore
Pingshan Cultural Cluster Book Mall is a bookstore interior inspired by the local Hakka enclosed houses of Shenzhen. The space is divided into a square zone and a round zone. The square zone is oriented to young people, and its layout expands around a central activity area. The atrium walls recall the structured facades of traditional tower buildings, while a mirror finish ceiling extends the view. The round zone is oriented to families and children, with curved book walls and a white spiral staircase. Reading, catering, exhibition and social functions are combined.
Within the evolving landscape of contemporary cultural retail design, this bookstore interior by Jiang & Associates Creative Design represents a compelling synthesis of monumental architectural gesture and intimate human-scaled experience. The design team appears to draw upon traditions of adaptive reuse aesthetics and industrial heritage architecture while creating an entirely new spatial narrative suited to contemporary cultural consumption. The soaring double-height atrium establishes an almost civic presence more commonly associated with libraries or museums, elevating the act of book browsing to an experience of architectural significance. The material palette demonstrates sophisticated restraint: raw concrete surfaces suggest intellectual seriousness and permanence, while generous applications of warm oak timber—spanning stairs, flooring, and shelving systems—introduce domestic warmth and tactile invitation. The mirrored ceiling represents a particularly ingenious intervention, effectively doubling the perceived vertical dimension while contributing a quality of luminous infinity that suggests the boundless nature of knowledge itself. Circulation elements become sculptural protagonists within the composition, with twin staircases tracing diagonal vectors that animate the space and encourage exploration across multiple levels. The lighting design merits particular attention for its layered approach: ambient reflection from the polished ceiling combines with focused downlighting to create pools of reading-appropriate illumination within the larger dramatic volume. Display furniture in simple geometric forms maintains flexibility while its neutral kraft finish defers to the books themselves as the true visual merchandise. One might observe how the space balances the cathedral-like aspiration of its vertical proportions with the accessible informality of its ground-level arrangements, creating an environment that honors literature through architectural ambition while remaining genuinely welcoming to casual visitors. How does this spatial experience shape our relationship to books and knowledge in an increasingly digital age?
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Pingshan Cultural Cluster - Book Mall, taking the local Hakka enclosed house culture as the design concept and the pattern of round outside but square inside as the main feature, has its space divided into "Square" and "Round" zones.
The square zone is oriented to young people, the overall layout of which expands around the central activity area. Inspired by "Diaolou" (tower building), we adopt the highly structured facade of Diaolou to create characteristic walls for the atrium. The use of mirror finish ceiling makes the image extend infinitely, activating the memory to the whole space. Our space design makes the timeline of "Consumption" extended to connect the experience services of public areas through catering, cultural creation, social interaction, exhibition, etc., increasing the interaction and emotional care between customers.
The round zone is oriented to families and children, which adopts lively circular and curved layout. The smooth curved book walls divide the space into parts, increasing the fun of passing through them. Both the book walls and stairs in the atrium shape a natural enclosed space, in which the white spiral staircase like a white ribbon highlights the circling force of the building and the power of the structure. Along the steps, the artistic lighting devices suspended above the head are scattered in order. The smooth sense of flow and shining lights creates a space just like among the stars, attracting people to discover it. - Dimensions & Packaging
- Total floor area is 6472.5㎡
- Tags
- culture, cluster, book mall, bookstore, Hakka, square and round
- Production Technology
- In order to convey the design scene of Hakka enclosed houses more clearly, we collected different disused wooden doors and windows of old buildings in the surrounding areas, and engraved their texture on the cement walls of the atrium. The wood texture in different types and periods formed rich and interesting texture patterns, which seems to be a dialogue between ancient and modern times.
- Design Challenge
- As the Book Mall is located on two sides of the building which are connected by a semi-outdoor passageway in the middle, so how to strengthen the connection of the space on both sides has become the difficulty of our design.
Deeply understanding and studying the historical value and architectural style of Hakka culture, we define the space on both sides of the building as two design attributes of "Square" and "Round", integrate the unique "Spirit of Place" essence of Hakka enclosed houses into the design concept for two different spaces, and analyze the attributes and functions of traditional space, so as to rematch the space requirements of the Book Mall. - Project Duration
- The project finished in April 2020 in Pingshan Cultural Center, Pingshan District, Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province
- Research
- Due to the prevalence of social media, the main groups of readers in traditional book malls are on the decline. For this reason, the Book Mall needs a different business model, and needs to explore and transform to a "Product + Space" combined model. The core part is to adapt its space to both different reader groups and multiple reading scenes and create a differentiated orientation. The designer sets up diversified leisure places for the Book Mall based on population characteristics and behavior patterns, providing the possibility of free switching and parallel coexistence of usage scenes. Functional scenes such as reading, leisure, communication and activities are integrated into the space, realizing the seamless connection between space and life scenes, thus creating a pleasant spirit of place.
- Inspiration
- The Book Mall is located in Pingshan District, Shenzhen City. Pingshan District, as the main settlement of Hakka people in Shenzhen, has dozens of Hakka enclosed houses, large and small. These houses have gone through many years, showing a distinctive style.
In the space design of the Book Mall, we hope to abandon the traditional concrete design method, but take "Pingshan Hakka Culture" as the core to extract the unique "Spirit of Place" of Hakka enclosed houses, integrate such spirit essence into the space design concept, and analyze the attributes and functions of the traditional space, so as to rematch them with the space demand of the bookstore. - Image Credits
- Zeng Tianpei
Colors of Pingshan Cultural Cluster Book Mall Bookstore
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