WUXI LAKE ART CENTER

Invited competition entry in collaboration with UDG-Architects, Shanghai, Chína

 

2006

 

Location:

Wuxi, Jiangsu, China

 

Design:

Vesa Honkonen

 

Team:

Anja Hämäläinen, Mari Koskinen, Tiina Olli, Ransu Helenius

 

Experts:

Jan Støring, Osmo Honkanen

 

SPIRAL GRAVITATION PRINCIPLE

Do you still remember what it felt like to play this one game when you were a child? The game has many variations but the basic idea is that you spin yourself round and round so fast that your head is light and you feel dizzy. Then you try to start running. But the world keeps spinning in your eyes and you can’t run straight. It feels as if you are standing straight but the earth is starting to get closer to you, and then finally, the earth hits you in the head, you fall, and laugh.

This spinning makes you loose the feeling of vertical balance. Gravitation becomes spiral and it has also a horizontal movement. It is often said that architecture is frozen music. I do not agree. I believe that architecture has the capacity of expressing the movement and being like music. With this I mean that good architecture has to have the same sensitivity as music, to have the movement in its expression. It has to be able to make us feel something, emotionally. At the same time I do not see any difference between any other forms of art. It is time to let architecture move and flow and to challenge even gravitation.

 

Spiral Gravitation Principle for Wu Xi Lake Art Center.

 

EARTH, SHELTER, SPACE

Wuxi Lake Art Center is built up with the interplay of three basic elements:

 

EARTH

Earth is the site, the place to build. It is fairly flat and it is connected to water. In fact you canÕt separate earth and water, they have the same role. They present balance, horizontality, nature. They are Zen. We will respect this place to build. Our other elements will start to play with earth. It is allowed to dive under it, lift it up. It is a question of relations, proportions and contrasts. (Landscape, nature, pond, park)

 

SHELTER

Shelter is moving through this place. It presents eternity, it is old, Lao. Its soul is from Yin. It is moving architecture. This great structure floats through the space, diving down under the earth, lifting itself up again. With its movement it creates place for shelter, a place to have spaces for functions. (The great roof structure)

 

SPACE

Space is the youngest element, and most flexible as well, sometimes even a little bit misbehaving. Sometimes they boldly go through the Shelter, some of them just peak shyly under the arms of Shelter. They can as well sit proudly on the top of it. Spaces provide the place for functions. Their nature is Ying. (Halls, offices, etc)

WUXI ART CENTER

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