The SQUARES in Tianshui is a communal facility that combines a public library and community welfare services with sustainable architecture. Designed by Japanese-led SAKO Architects, it was China’s first zero-carbon library. The building reflects SAKO Architects’ penchant for bold, geometric architecture that blends playful forms with cultural sensitivity.
SQUARES is defined by a series of interconnected square rooms and motifs. Its thoughtful, light-filled design fosters intergenerational connection and quiet reflection in a small residential town setting.
A community hub
The Yangzheng Library, the project’s official name, is located in the Panjizhai village of Tianshui, Gansu Province, China. A Chinese property developer, who wished to repurpose his ancestral home for the community’s benefit, donated the land for a new library and senior daycare centre. This two-storey building, spanning 772 square metres, seamlessly integrates a library with a non-residential support facility for older adults. It offers recreational and wellness activities to enhance the lives of local residents. SAKO Architects created a building that reflects this duality of purpose, mixing quiet and communal rooms with shared circulation zones.
Architectural design and cultural symbolism
The site faces onto a residential street and is surrounded by hills and tightly packed buildings. Addressing this context, exterior-facing windows were kept to a minimum, improving both sound insulation and thermal performance. On the second floor, a series of reading rooms and a rest area face onto a triple-glazed, open courtyard in the centre of the building.
A square cut into the roof above the courtyard frames the sky. Throughout the day, shadows shift as light moves across this enclosure. The interplay of deep eaves and dark corridors enhances the way in which light filters through the structure, producing a mirrored, multiplied effect of the sky above. On certain occasions, the visible sky fragments appear as “nine” — in Chinese culture, nine (九, jiǔ) is considered a number of harmony, wholeness, or even heavenly connection.
A mandala of order and symbolism
The building’s plan and elevation components are made up of squares. The square courtyard is surrounded by a square cloister-like corridor and square reading rooms. These spaces are concentric and symmetrical, forming “an orderly nested planar composition like a mandala,” says SAKO Architects. The bookshelves are square, with four or nine modules directly connected to the square windows on the perimeter. These windows appear random on the outside, but their arrangement inside is harmonious.
In Chinese culture, the square symbolises earth, order, and moral clarity. In SQUARES, this is demonstrated both architecturally and symbolically.
The building’s design was ambitious in its pursuit of zero carbon. The high level of thermal insulation, solar and on-site wind power generation, and the use of geothermal heat, made it China’s first zero-carbon library.
