Jiangnan Mintage Museum and the Headquarter of Kingjee Group

The project sited in part of No. 8 Building of the Park with well-kept grey brick walls dated back to the Second Machine Tool Works period, arched consecutively into a powerful rhythm and redolent of history in both mass and hue. The workshop underwent a renovation that introduced concrete and steel frame structures, transforming the open and one space into dividable spaces suitable for office. This time the newly supplanted serves only for division instead of bearing, posing a tendency to a weak architecture right on material choice. Within the same and one space, constructed objects of different ages would be displayed in emphasized contrast while mediated by unifying arches and juxtaposed materials from various ages without sense of mismatch. The usable interior area was barely 150 sqm, with a pair of arches cut through each of the northern and southern walls, to which two sets of new arches were implanted to divide the layout into three functional spaces, namely the reception, exhibition and open tea area, while highlighting the arched rhythm. Hued lightly and finished wholly in stucco, the new arches formed a meaningful contrast with the existing deep, rough grey bricks. As expected from the client, the new-born museum also worked as a parlor for the enterprise apart from its obligatory role of a mint museum of all ages and events. Therefore, the final ensemble was diluted of a likely didactic or propagandist air to feature a daily situation permeable within a stately historical atmosphere. The office space took up two floors, the ground one being the main theater for design with an area of about 390 sqm. In an interior opened through north and south by grey brick arches and added with steel structures and concrete, the relationships in between was taken into account as the prime induced variable. By presenting a ‘small box’ within it, the large space is divided into two, one as an open office and the other for the senior managers; the desks were also lined along the south in alignment with the arch-arches, paying fully respect to the staff’s comfort and enriching the space with a three-dimensional melody in the meantime. The arches installed into the senior manager office were cunningly determined in height and distance so as to detach from the wall while merge into the arch-arches, lending the historic imprint a spatial elegance. It was a light color scheme that coated the space as a backdrop for the interplay of new-implanted elements and previous arches, articulating the historic sense with humane sentiment. Accent lighting and soft decoration fulfilled the whole space and strengthened the human-space connection, presenting an open, harmonious and creative atmosphere for work. Arch has been used so extensively in architectural and interior projects recently that it’s almost fallen from popular to commonplace. Though distancing the extraneous popular patterns, we were inspired by the time-honored arches within the site that only more and new arches could engender a complete while clear-cut relationship, and it proved appropriate. Throughout grooming history of the Mint in the initial design phases and later juxtaposing the materials of different ages, the visitor’s expected to feel an evoked concern for the elapsed time and homage to the bygone history.