Nestled along Jinshui East Road, the Qili River Activity Center gracefully integrates into its scenic surroundings, bordered by the Qili River and riverside park. This U-shaped architectural marvel serves as a cultural nexus, embodying a harmonious blend of community services and artistic spaces. Hosting a spectrum of activities, from exhibitions to communal gatherings, the design employs a minimalist, white geometric aesthetic. A floating effect is achieved through elevated glass facades, enhancing the building's lightness. Serenity meets vibrancy, making this center an urban haven.
Background:
The project is located on the north side of Jinshui East Road in Zhengzhou of China, adjacent to the Qili River and Riverside Park, boasting a picturesque natural environment. Integrating the superior natural resources of the surrounding area, it aims to create an activity center infused with artistic and cultural sensibilities, offering community life services and fulfilling various public activity needs. It includes spaces for festive events, children's reading activities, friend gatherings, and other community interactions.
Architectural Functions:
The building takes on a U-shaped volume. The bottom part of the northern volume houses exhibition spaces, benefiting from direct natural lighting. The upper levels consist of diverse spaces, including multifunctional halls, activity rooms, and educational areas. The southern volume is tranquilly positioned above the water surface, accommodating community interaction functions such as shared kitchens, coworking spaces, and children's book bars.
Positioning and Concept:
Nestled within the bustling city, the project defines spatial boundaries with pure white geometric forms, creating a serene oasis amidst the urban hustle. The interior and exterior spaces complement each other, welcoming visitors with a calm and embracing ambiance, allowing them to shed all mental burdens and relax freely.
To establish a relaxed and comfortable architectural atmosphere, the architects simplified the forms, spaces, and colors.
A series of geometric elements, including straight lines and curves, were employed to construct the required spatial elements, encompassing the building, water features, plaza, and pathways.
The warm white artificial stone walls and translucent glass surfaces exude a lightness akin to a gentle breeze, floating gracefully above the calm dark waters. The white geometric volumes of the activity center appear suspended above the water surface. The ground floor glass features ultra-clear high-transparency glass, allowing users to navigate within this sculptural building. Light and shadows dance in the space, providing a multidimensional experiential journey.
Along the Street and Entrance:
The building features a vast terrace and cantilevered volumes along the street, serving as the iconic image of the main entrance. The design incorporates curved cuttings at the upper corners, emphasizing its distinctive character. This curved facet employs contemporary artistic techniques, mitigating the monotony and rigidity of straight geometric forms, infusing a lively sense of dynamism.
Plaza and Pathways:
A tranquil water courtyard extends along the street, leading to the main entrance. Visitors first traverse a pathway floating on the water surface before entering the building. Through this ceremonial spatial treatment, the activity center is intentionally distanced, allowing people to quickly calm down before entering the building, escaping the external hustle and bustle.
The building's public spaces unfold around a serene water courtyard, which opens like a trumpet towards the road, forming a relatively secluded public area. While the building is open to the city, it remains relatively undisturbed. The linear contours of the building balance harmoniously with the curved spatial layout of the water courtyard, engaging in a dynamic architectural dialogue.
Landscape and Architecture:
A street corner entrance marks the starting point connecting the city and life, where static space meets changing life. The design uses natural textures to establish an orderly foundation, creating a sequential spatial narrative that guides pedestrians into the inner sanctuary—a place for mental tranquility.
The project incorporates a large tranquil water pool forming the central courtyard, harmonizing with the site's spirit. The still water surface reflects the architecture, enhancing its sculptural quality. The presence of the building establishes boundaries and a sense of scale within the natural landscape.
The architecture complements the semi-enclosed inner courtyard space, where the curved water surface mirrors the linear contours of the building. Interspersed within are pathways floating on the water surface, their simplicity in linearity contrasting with the building's substantial sculptural form, evoking a sense of serene strength.
Sensation of Floating:
To create a sense of lightness, the structural columns on the ground floor are recessed inward. By adding an additional layer of eaves, the heavy volume is supported by ring beams, making the ground floor facade appear more delicate. Extensive floor-to-ceiling glass panels, situated 1 meter above the ground, give the impression of the walls "floating." The building extends outward, resembling a sculptural form floating on the water's surface.
Comfort:
Windows at a human-eye level introduce natural light indoors while preventing glare on exhibition spaces, ensuring the protection of exhibits and conserving energy.
The northern building's ground floor reading area lowers sightlines, allowing visitors to quietly read and engage with the courtyard's scenery. The southern building features larger and more open floor-to-ceiling windows on the ground floor, equipped with glass louvers to meet the activity center's lighting needs while avoiding excessive sunlight. A large solid wall is placed on the western side, featuring narrow strip windows to prevent direct exposure to the western sun.
Geometric Sensibility:
On the roadside, the main facade forms a precise curved wall, resembling a cylindrical geometric shape, introducing a subtle change and dynamism within the static and controlled environment. Contrasted with the dignified warm-white stone surface, the accented metal copper panels enhance material richness and alleviate the monotonous atmosphere.
Sense of Lightness:
The protruding walls and elegantly simple balconies, when illuminated by natural light, cast deep and shallow shadows on the building's surface, softening its somewhat stern form. The interplay of scale and proportion, lightness and weight, shapes these strongly contrasting forms, attempting to create a sense of geometric beauty and strength through the interplay of light, shadow, proportions, and functional flexibility.
Light and Shadow with Materials:
The primary facade material of the building is grooved artificial stone. Different angles of light create varying light and shadow effects on the stone, and the grooved surface's texture enhances the softness of the light and shadow at the boundary between brightness and darkness. The gentle interplay of light and shadow at the boundaries, coupled with the varied protrusions and indentations of the building's volume, further enhances its sculptural quality.
Facade Materials:
The building is mainly composed of grooved stone, imitation copper stainless steel, and ultra-clear glass. The majority of the facade features grooved artificial stone, while imitation copper stainless steel is used for the ceiling, and ultra-clear glass is employed at the facade's glazed areas.
The grooving process of the stone enhances its weightiness and plays with light and shadow. After the grooves are made with a grooving machine, manual strikes create a natural and unordered texture, eliminating the coldness of smooth stone. This method allows the stone to better capture light, shadow, time, and traces. The sporadic use of imitation copper stainless steel not only enhances the stone's sculptability but also highlights the delicate quality of the metal, resembling the exquisite texture of copper.
Team:
Architects: Lacime Architects
Photographs: Zhiyi Photography Studio, Henan Dongya Photography, Lei YAN
Principal Architect: Zhaoqing SONG
Deputy Architects: Zhaoqing SONG
Design Team Members: Yi WANG, Weihua PANG, Yichao WU
Landscape Design: S.P.I Landscape Group
Lighting Design: Biang Lighting Design Consulting (Shanghai) Co., LTD
Construction Consultant: UCONIA Co., Ltd.
Client: Zhengzhou Qirun Real Estate Development Co., LTD
Material Used:
Mitation Copper Stainless Steel Brushed Aluminum Plate
Uitra White Tepered Hollow Low-E Glass
Pull Trough Artificial Mud Stone
