Chongqing Tiandi Art Gallery

TIANDI ART GALLERY CHONGQING, CHINA WALKING SCENERY Tiandi Art Gallery is located in the south bank of Jialingjiang River, close to the lake by Tiandi property. There are steep hills in Yuzhong peninsula in the south, Chongqing Tiandi Commercial Street in the north, and residential area under construction in the west. Thinking The starting point is how to merge the new building to a complex environment and make it become a part of the landscape, and how to form a dialogue between the interior space experience and the surroundings; we hope the building can be a container of different urban fragments and act as a sensory medium to experience the scenery. Layout based on topography The shape of the land follows with the belt-type lakeshore, which is relatively long and narrow. The building's overall layout complied with the topography and was divided into three volumes based on different functions. The three volumes are linked together through a wing space, two of which form two half closed yards with the volume, one is connected with a pool to form a sunken yard, the other is linked with a square to hold small gathering activities for people in the park. Spatial forms Tiandi Art Gallery includes Art Display & Exhibition Hall, Vanke Brand & Project Experience Center and Café House. The gallery frequently displays contemporary artworks by local artists, therefore, we designed a double-height space to display them. The staircases were utilized to connect different display platforms which are varied in height and can be used to exhibit paintings, sculptures and installation art, or provide art education for children. In this design, we used the contrast of white walls and black stairs to weaken the internal space form, moreover, we focused on the visiting path, through which the indoor and outdoor scenes were closely linked together and the scenery became a part of the exhibition. The platform on the top borrows scenery from the distant mountains, aiming to evoke a feeling of mountain climbing while walking around the museum, and the light reflected through the high windows attract visitors to climb up. The Brand Display & Project Experience Center is a single-storey space used for the introduction of Vanke's Tiandi property, in which we provided a wide scale according to the requirements of planning model display and negotiation. During the design process, we consciously lowered the height of the space by the lakeside, in order to avoid the uncontrollable vision and keep the sight inside the park. The Café House was raised to the second floor to bring the waterscape inside. On the one hand, a slightly tilted volume is echoing with the geometric relation of the overall form, on the other hand, it is trying to endow a simple box with certain space gestures and expressions through a personalized action. Material application Because Chongqing is often rainy or foggy, and the building is adjacent to the lake, we chose very concise and readable architectural forms at the beginning of the design, and determined to use black brushed stainless steel as the main material during detailed design. Brushed finish requires great caution and its luster is very subtle, no matter on its handling of plating or glossiness, a delicate difference may be enlarged by the architecture. We spent a lot of time on adjusting the material with the supplier and finally selected a moderate blue brushed effect, so that the architecture can show the geometric relationship and space intention even though Chongqing often has a low light circumstance, besides, instead of becoming an abrupt element in the environment it is integrated into the environment in a relatively ideal degree. The frameless glasses were expected to obtain a more continuous view through the windows.