White Comedy of Xi’an Zhongshu Bookstore

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Wutopia Lab recently designed an entirely white Zhongshu Bookstore in Xi’an, one of the most ancient cities in China which used to be the capital for thirteen dynasties, with 300 tons of steel and 30,000 meters of light strips.

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We aborted our design of a direct entry into the bookstore, and created a glittering entrance in the commercial space on the fourth floor; this required to make free of the floor slab of fifth floor into the main area of the bookstore without destroying the main structure. We built a pillar-less white curvy staircase, highlighted by a spiral white panel, surrounded by custom-made white acrylic walls. Readers coming from their everyday life, heading up the stairs step by step, and are encouraged by the spirit of knowledge and curiosity displayed through the books around them to enter the bookstore over the clouds.

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The basic space of the bookstore consists of popular book recommendation areas and public reading areas. We decided to make a reading paradise over the “clouds”, and it should have a light and streamlined free space, but in order to follow the restrictions of fire codes, we had to challenge the traditional types and materials of the bookshelf. For the first time, we used 5mm thick steel plates to customize curved bookshelves. After precise structural calculations, the steel frame that is hidden behind the foundation is used as the support of the structure. The over 3,000 meters long steel plated bookshelf floats in the air as a cantilevered structure. Digital concepts and technologies are used in order to realize such a soft and free space: each piece of steel plate has been optimized through programming, processed by CNC machine tools, and then assembled on site according to the numbering.

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The free flowing bookshelf outlined by a curve has a total of ten levels, making full use of the corners of the public reading area. The rounded chamfers leave the space with no sharp corner, the back panel is made by a translucent acrylic; whereas the book recommendation area of the white bookstore is to suspend the triangular steel plate with a slender screw, so that the books displayed above seem to float in the air. This is a brand new experience to the Zhongshu bookstore branches.

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There is a pantheon in central of the public reading area. In the center of the floor structural beams stands an exquisite displaying rack for Zhongshu's “Book of the Month” selection, and can only be held by one person at a time. The floor slab here was replaced with a glass floor in order to mimic an illusion of water surface. The space underneath it holds a room for reading  meeting or a mini conference. This invisible academy and the visible pantheon together form the center of Zhongshu Bookstore — an oasis where the mind and soul can be rejuvenated and set free.

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Zhongshu Bookstore's children's library is a crystal structure hidden in the forest. It was inspired by the trees and animal silhouettes of the nine-colored deer to protect the children’s Wonderland. Kids will find their own hidden entrances, a hidden world of playful tricks and caves, and have the skylines of the architecture, blue skies and starry nights. This is a world for children.

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Zhongshu Bookstore has ensured that the core shopping area is not only a quiet zone, but also a motion zone based on the streamline and operation of the cinema combined with the coffee and meal service with more dining tables and booths. The bookstore, thus, is creatively merged with the cinema.

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The design and construction of Zhongshu Bookstore which lasted 600 days is not only the tran-scendence of Zhongshu Bookstore itself, but also represents the great urban revival that Xi’an is currently experiencing. The whitest bookstore is filled with various kinds of ancient souls of var-ious temperatures with pure thoughts, memories, and hopes.

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I hope my architectural practices reiterate our everyday life through immense imaginations and dramatic artistic expressions. I also hop that it transforms reality into a “magic reality” and creates an illusion that uncovers bits of truths in our life. Miracle, raising from ordinary life, is believed to be both a magnification and a fated outcome of ordinary life — the stories of which can be colored and told in an extraordinary fashion. Zhongshu Bookstore pays the tribute and performs a white Divine Comedy to the capital of thirteen dynasties — Xi’an.

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Xi'an Zhongshu 서점

4층 상업공간의 화려한 입구를 통해 들어갈 수 있도록 계획한 서점이다. 흰색 패널로 강조된 기둥이 없는 나선형 계단은 맞춤 제작한 흰색 아크릴 벽으로 둘러싸여 있다. 독자들이 한 걸음씩 계단을 오르고, 주변의 책을 통해 보여지는 지식과 호기심에 고무되어 서점에 들어선다. 서점의 기본 공간은 인기 있는 책 추천 구역과 공공 독서 구역으로 구성되어 있다. "구름" 위에 독서 천국을 만들기로 결정하고 전형적인 책꽂이의 종류와 재료와 달리 5mm 두께의 강판을 사용하여 커브형의 책꽂이를 맞춤 제작했다. 

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또한, 길이 3,000m가 넘는 강철 도금 책장은 캔틸레버 구조물로 공중에 떠 있으며, 커브에 의해 자유자재로 흐르는 책장은 총 10단위로 모서리를 충분히 활용한다. 서점의 어린이 도서관은 숲 속에 감춰진 콘셉트로, 아이들의 원더랜드를 위한 사슴과 나무의 실루엣에서 영감을 받았다. 이 서점은 조용한 영역인 동시에, 커피 및 식사 서비스와 결합된 영화관 운영을 기반으로 한 활동적인 핵심 상업시설의 역할을 가능하게 한다.

SECTION

5th FLOOR PLAN

Design firm Wutopia Lab 

Project location Xi’an, Shanxi, China 

Project area 1,886㎡

Design period 2016. 9 - 2017. 6 

Construction period 2017. 7 - 2018. 5 

Chief architect YU Ting 

Project architect Chen LIN 

Design team Jie LV, Jianming ZHU, Mingcheng DU, Liyuan LU 

Design consultant TOPOS DESIGN CLANS 

Lighting design Zilu WANG 

Construction team Shaanxi FuLei Decoration Design Engineering Co., Ltd.

Clients Shanghai Zhongshu Industrial Co., Ltd., Xi'an China Movie Times International Studios 

Photographer CreatAR Images

해당 프로젝트는 건축문화 2019년 4월호(Vol. 455)에 게재 되었습니다.

The project was published in the Apr, 2019 issue of the magazine(Vol. 455).