Beijing, China (Fall, 2022) – Mirroring the Heart of Heaven and Earth:
Ideals and Images in the Chinese Study, an exhibition designed by New York-based firm OLI Architecture, has opened in the Palace Museum. Located in the center of the 72-hectare complex in the Forbidden City, built in the fifteenth century, the museum houses one of the world’s largest collections of ancient Chinese artifacts, calligraphy, paintings, and porcelain. Working closely with curators at The Palace Museum, OLI Architecture has created a space that brings together art and objects spanning from antiquity to contemporary art within the historical architecture.

– Liu Dan (b. 1953) an ink painter trained in traditional style ink painting, he lives and works in Beijing, China.
– Xu Bing (b. 1955) is a multi-media artist known for his calligraphy and printmaking, who divides his time between New York City and Beijing.
– Xu Lei (b. 1963) an ink painter heavily involved in China’s 1980’s New Wave movement who currently serves as the Art Director of Beijing’s Today Art Museum.
– Bai Ming (b. 1965) a ceramicist and painter who teaches at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
– Young Ho Chang (b. 1956) an award-winning architect and researcher who is currently a professor of architecture at MIT.

Xiuwu in northern Henan province is an ancient county famous for natural scenic tourism but a new economy has started blossoming promoting aesthetic architecture, crafted urban products and development.  Anchoring the new district developing around the recently completed Xiuwu West high speed rail station in Xiuwu County, Henan Province is the new 33,960m2 China Hanfu Cultural Center.  Home of the “Never Ending Hanfu Festival,” the new center is influenced by traditional Han costumes based on lightness and simplicity, emphasizing the harmony between man and nature.  Yet, in line with the ethos of the growing modern Hanfu culture, the center is a new interpretation of the essence of traditional culture in a contemporary context combining art, design and fashion and the aesthetic taste of the younger generation.

The largest volume contains main exhibition halls on three floors each with 2,800m2 with 12m column spans.  The other two volumes contain exhibition halls on the first floor, multifunction halls on the second floor and a lecture hall and banquet hall on the 3^rd floor with larger uninterrupted spans.   All major functions provide flexible floor space to provide over 15,000m2 of exhibition space.

In the center of the three main volumes is a central glass encased atrium with colorful loggias reminiscent of the famous cave dwellings nearby north of Xiuwu.  A series of dynamically arranged vertical ramps and stairs with glass guardrails provide strategic connections between program volumes while acting as a catwalk for costume clad visitors to see and be seen as if in an impromptu fashion show. 

Rising out of Dongbao Mountain on a promontory overlooking Li Shui City at the bend of the Ou river, the Qingtian Stone Carving Art Center is the anchor of the Dongbao Mountain Overseas Chinese Cultural and Museum Ecological City in Qingtian County, Zhejiang province.

Influenced by the long history of stone craft art that Qingtian became famous for, the museum showcasing exemplary examples of stone carving, rises out of the earth as if carved out of the unique topography of the site. In lieu of buildings built on an artificial platform, the museum straddles the heaven and earth housing extensive permanent galleries, two temporary galleries, education and multifunctional venues as well as artist residences and a high end restaurant and museum café seamlessly integrating with the natural surroundings and landscape with extensive views across Li Shu City.

With it’s beautiful modeling in harmony with the surrounding and refined craftmanship in construction, and state of the art display, the Qingtian Stone Carving Art Center will be the premiere center of the thousand year old art form known as “Embroidery on Stone,” recognized as one of China’s national intangible cultural heritage.

The spaces of the museum fall in a similarly layered sequence, with the visitor following along through the various galleries and functions in separate volumetric entities. The circulation throughout the architecture, with direct interaction with the surrounding Suzhou Gardens, establishes a narrative of wood block printing techniques, from process to end product.

Located in a city known for its gardens, the Suzhou Censer Museum celebrates the grandfather of the client, a renowned maker and merchant of incense burners, objects historically and highly coveted by collectors, and the subsequent generations of successful master craftsmen and merchants in the family.

Situated in the mountains of Shigaraki, Japan, the Chapel of the Miho Institute of Aesthetics, I.M. Pei’s last significant work, serves as the physical and spiritual center of the 7-12th grade private institution with a holistic approach to natural agriculture and aesthetics.

The 240-seat chapel form results from folding a two-dimensional fan-shaped surface into a conical volume, defined geometrically by a lemniscate curve, or a torus sectioned tangent to its inner circle. The lofted surface between the top and bottom curves is fabricated with 51 custom-warped stainless steels panels on the exterior and over 8,454 individually curved Japanese red cedar wood planks on the interior cladding a structural concrete shell. The joints of the wood planks vary in size to control absorption of various sound wavelengths to create an optimal neutral space for congregation and contemplation.

The museum is a simple geometric volume composed of angled planes, with thin vertical ceramic frits of varying densities that provide both pattern and shading. A floating glass enclosure of horizontally fritted glass defines the second-floor volume, where both the exhibition space and service core are housed.

Upon entering the building, the visitor experiences the in-between spaces created by the primary and secondary envelopes of fritted glass, engaging panoramic views of different densities, reminiscent of the stories and compositions woven from the colorful threads of silk embroidery.

The open plan within the exhibition space allows for functional flexibility while retaining a strong circuit of continuously unfolding experiences. The program is defined by light, ephemeral partitions, deriving their colorful translucency from those of embroidered screens. The materiality and form of the translucent surfaces creates a “living 2D embroidery” from the observer’s perspective.

The China Silk Embroidery Art Museum is located on the west side of Suzhou, China, housing a UNESCO World Heritage Garden and Wang Ao Temple. With the exception of a few large-scale public buildings, the context is residential and richly historic with the history of Suzhou’s embroidery art. The design for the museum distinguishes architectural volumes by different programmatic functions, allocating exhibition space to the Southeast while locating reception functions to the West. Entering through a gate, visitors pass through a glass reception pavilion before circulating through the galleries of artifacts and masterpieces, following the sequential steps of embroidery production: from embroidery design to silk dying, weaving, and mounting for display.

The museum integrates the UNESCO Garden through an array of small-scale volumes within the landscape, expanding further into small courtyards. The space fluctuates through harmonic oppositions, from open to enclosed spaces both narrow and wide. While the embroidery galleries and studios require indirect lighting, the public spaces adjacent to the courtyard access its abundant daylight.

Haidao Silk Art Cultural Museum takes center stage as a cultural beacon in the Haidao Silk Cultural Art Park, situated in the new Central Business District of Hainan, China. The facade is composed of draped “silk,” aligning the main traffic artery and the Centeral Park of master plan. Expressed through the varying textures of colored concrete, polished stone and glass, the facade accentuates the “drape” and curvature along the viewer’s changing vantage and the movement of the sun.

The interwoven interior spaces establish a typology of a vertical “living museum,” where various cultural events and silk exhibitions take place alongside other endeavors of entertainment, education, shopping and leisure. The amalgamation of activities within the parameters of museography establish an architecture integral to China’s modern, international lifestyle.

The 36,000 m2 Museum of Islamic Art is located south of Doha’s Corniche on a newly created island 60 meters from the shore. Protected by a C-shaped peninsula, the limestone and granite building is physically isolated yet visible from all around the capital city, emerging timelessly from the Persian Gulf.

A search for the essence of Islamic architecture within its wide-ranging cultural and regional diversity revealed the paramount importance of the desert sun and the simple geometric forms it so powerfully brings to life. The exterior of the museum is thus sculpturally modulated by the sun’s play of radiant surfaces against deep shadows, visually faceting away the building’s large mass.

The Suzhou Museum design finds inspirations from the classical buildings of Suzhou with white stucco walls and grey tiled roofs, and from the classical gardens of Suzhou for which the city became famous. While respecting the historical context of the past, the design illustrates a new interpretation of the classical architecture, meeting the challenging design requirements of being not only “Chinese and Suzhou, but also contemporary and forward-reaching.” Immediately upon completion, the building has been recognized as an important and successful precedence in the delicate balance of modern building design in the historical Chinese context.

The new Suzhou Museum employs a simple building palette with white walls and stone tiled roofs. The black granite roof tiles are uniform and solid, and in harmony with the traditional tile roofs of Suzhou. The galleries are interconnected with a series of courtyards. The main garden of the museum is separated from the adjacent Unesco designated Humble Administrator’s Garden by a shared wall. The design of the main garden is simple and elegant, with a flowing pond, gazebo and a sliced stonescape as the centerpiece. The sliced rocks from Shandong province carefully arranged against the white courtyard wall form a three-dimensional Chinese landscape painting.