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Books in Clouds, subtraction as addition

Wutopia Lab

Retail  /  Completed
Wutopia Lab

Duoyun Bookstore was officially completed and grandly opened on June 26, 2021. This is the first store in a foreign province for Duoyun Bookstore, which was born in Shanghai. Subtraction as Addition Clouds have a sophisticated and pure beauty. Rather than perform cosmetic surgery on a collage of cluttered commercial territorial façades, I decided to wrap them in a continuous white perforated aluminum panel wall. The continuous white creates a complex and pure interface on the riverside (by controlling the perforation rate, the façade creates a cloud of layers) hiding the bookstore. The aluminum wall is the façade, or it can be stripped away to become a courtyard enclosure or both. The continuous white aluminum wall is used as an addition to create a serene and pleasant visual subtraction. Traditional Typology The site of the academy is located in buildings 1 and 3 of a group of four buildings on the edge of the Yongning River. Building 1 is also composed of two buildings connected on the first floor as one. The public space site has a basement patio and an evacuation stairwell. It is a place where the focal points are scattered and unfocused. Traditionally, the "shuyuan" with scale and form are formed by a group of ordered buildings. If I consider the scattered buildings 1 and 3 and the interior space as the type of pavilions and pavilions in a traditional building group, then it is obvious that such a building group lacks a courtyard as a focal point. Since I needed a space to control these scattered individuals, creating a courtyard type was a natural choice for me. I planned a square yard in the open space between buildings 1 and 3. However, this yard was hidden behind the fence between buildings 1 and 2 (other people's properties). I turned this courtyard into a front yard. It became the official entrance of the bookstore. The first area is the lifestyle book (area), and the coffee (pavilion) on the east side is near the water. I designed the staircase from the coffee to the second floor as a display (terrace) for reproductions of rare books combined with traffic. The second floor of the coffee is then the future urban parlor room (building). An interior aisle has been added on the west side to Building 1. The first floor of Building 1 is the bookstore area, with the entrance being the unique Duoyun shelving area (kiosk) with attitude, and then turning north into the main bookstore display (hall). After passing through the cashier's desk, you will enter the reading (dwelling) designed using the aisle, followed by the creative (house). Metaphors and Symbols of Colorful Clouds I insist that architecture should be full of metaphors. We distilled the clouds into an easy-to-read formal symbol, turning them into doorways, logos and even UIs, while the white of the clouds covers all the background spaces of the building to reinforce the symbolic meaning in the clouds and represent the Shanghai of the clouds. The orange color extracted from Huangyan's most famous orange not only represents the Huangyan of Duoyun, but also becomes the main color in the foreground of the entrance book and coffee area. From white clouds to orange clouds, it is easy to build a story about five-color auspicious clouds. The bookstore area thus includes the green color in the foreground of the cultural and creative area. This is also the classic color in the Duoyun Bookstore series. More importantly, the blue as cyan has a special meaning in the local Taizhou area and cannot be used as the main color, so the classic green in the Duoyun Bookstore furniture series was chosen as the cyan cloud. Crimson was chosen as the red cloud for the speech area on the second floor, and pink and purple was chosen as the purple cloud for the exhibition area on the second floor. The five different colors identify the different main functional areas. This is a further interpretation of the metaphor of clouds. The Myth of the White Cloud Garden The courtyard of the bookstore embodies an attempt to pursue the spirit behind the form of the garden. With the authorization of the owner, I had full will to be the owner of this courtyard to design it subjectively. I decided to create a world (garden) that fits my own concept of the site. I eliminated the structures and facilities on the original site. I kept the original trees and plants, and also kept but modified the fire stairwell and smoke extraction courtyard required by code. I viewed the courtyard as a water surface, and the three groups of trees forming a green island formed the basic paradigm of a pond and three hills in a Chinese garden. Surprises Readers will find two cloud stools, one white and one blue, in the White Cloud Court. These are made of plastic from recycled marine garbage. Taking advantage of Huangyan being the capital of molds, molds were made to infuse and mold the plastic. The use of plastic from recycled marine garbage comes from my daughter's education on environmental protection and the need for architects to express an environmentally friendly attitude in their own designs. There is a blue glass house up the spiral staircase of the cafe, and the daylight tints the area where the orange staircase and the roof meet an extremely beautiful purple. But as soon as you press a switch, the blue glass becomes colorless and transparent, and the Yongning River leaps into view. This glass is a car glass technology developed by a local company in Huangyan.

Credits

 Taizhou, Zhejiang Province
 China
 Taizhou Huangyan Yongyun Cultural Development Co., Ltd. ; Shanghai Century Cloud Culture Development Co., Ltd.
 06/2021
 1726 m2
 Wutopia Lab
 Chief Architect: Yu Ting; Pre-project Architect: Wang Zhuoer; Post-project Architect: Pu Shengrui; Project Architect Assistant, Architect in Residence: Mi Kejie
 Design Consultation: Office ZHU; Lighting Consultant: Chloe Zhang, Cai Mingjie
 CreatAR Images

Curriculum

Wutopia Lab is founded by the chief architect Yu Ting in Shanghai, which is an architecture company based on a new paradigm of complex system. Wutopia Lab regards Shanghai's culture and life style as a starting point, using architecture as a tool to promote sociological progress within building practice.
Wutopia Lab focuses on human and is dedicated to link different aspects of urban life: traditional, daily and cultural to interpret Urbanian lifestyle, and to develop acontemporary Chinese aesthetic based on Shanghai.
While facing each project, Wutopia Lab’s practices are promoted to show different innovative strategies, thinking modes and forms.
Wutopia Lab is committed to comprehensive design, not only to complete the concept and deepen of buildings, but also focuses on early planning and analysis along with landscape and interior design. Wutopia Lab also has the capacity to coordinate and collaborate different types of departments and on-site construction.

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