LIBRAIRIE AVANT-GARDE
Let use talent to enter the civil service, write for the whole world (idiom)
Huizhou culture, also known as “Hui culture”, is one of the three major regional cultures in China (Dunhuang culture, Hui culture and Tibetan culture), and is also an important part of traditional Chinese culture.
Huizhou people, “Confucian and then Jia”, “Jia and good Confucian”, widely made friends with the government, the scribes, have a good cultural literacy, the construction of the ancient architecture of a unique style, reasonable layout, exquisite decorations, changes in the natural, with a pure and natural flavor of the vernacular. In addition, Huizhou is rich in wood, folk carving, painting tradition, brick carving, wood carving, stone carving unique. At the same time, there is a prevalent trend of respecting ancestors, and each village has built its own ancestral halls, which are divided into clan ancestral halls, branch ancestral halls and family ancestral halls.
In this small village, there is a Wang family shrine Qitai Hall, built in the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, more than 230 years ago. And this small ancestral hall, which has experienced countless hours of history, was injected with new blood in 2014 - LIBRAIRIE AVANT-GARDE (Bishan), the eighth branch of Nanjing LIBRAIRIE AVANT-GARDE and the first bookstore in the countryside. LIBRAIRIE AVANT-GARDE has been committed to rooting into the countryside for ten years, not for commercial needs, but for the dissemination of culture, so that those areas where it is most difficult to be able to read books have a cultural utopia gathered for the love of reading and books.
After ten years of time, sun and rain, LIBRAIRIE AVANT-GARDE (Bishan) has also faced many operational problems. The cultural and creative products and books on both sides of the patio have faded and cracked due to prolonged exposure to the sun, which has greatly increased the amount of wear and tear in the store. When encountering rainy weather, the ground moisture returns to the wooden bookcases also increase the damage. After ten years, the operation of the water bar has increased in demand, and there are many problems with power supply and equipment drainage. The Cowshed Café was unable to achieve a comfortable environment for guests to rest because of the insulation of the roof. The dilapidation of the original staircase and the narrow space increased the danger of many guests walking up and down the stairs.
When LIBRAIRIE AVANT-GARDE listed the realistic problems to us one by one, we felt that the difficulty of this project was not just to solve these operational challenges, but how a heritage-protected building could find a balance between history and modernity, preserving the original characteristics of this family shrine while enabling it to adapt to the needs of modern society. The Bishan Bookstore needs to have a clear business strategy and plan, which all need to be adapted to the changing consumption and needs of the times and to think with the times. If the market-oriented development of the space is hampered by over-protection, LIBRAIRIE AVANT-GARDE（Bishan） will become an exhibit for ornamental purposes only, and its value as a cultural container will be lost.
The renewal of LIBRAIRIE AVANT-GARDE（Bishan) is to allow people to re-recognize and re-experience this ancestral hall of historical significance, not to “keep the old”, but to keep a kind of immersive experience through the combination of the external appearance of Huizhou architecture, functions and scenes, to evoke people's respect for the history of Huizhou, cultural understanding, so as to shape a sense of belonging, and to keep the cultural heritage under the realization of functional and economic values.3 The renewal of Bishan Bookstore is to let people re-recognize and experience this ancestral hall of historical significance. The cultural heritage is kept under the realization of functional and economic values.
First of all, the transformation of the bookcase is the core of the whole design, in order to reduce the damage to the bookcase caused by the humidity on the ground, the cement board is used to build the bookcase wall, and the bookcase is partially embedded. The form of the whole bookcase wall is inspired by the screen in Chinese painting, and the center area wrapped by three screens is the area for the daily activities of the literati.
The screened bookcase recedes backward, drawing the viewer's eye toward the center of the picture. The side lines on either side do not focus on a vanishing point, but on the invisible central axis. The symmetrical bookcases thus do not create an illusory three-dimensional space, but rather mark out the location of a visual center.
In Chinese painting, the screen is a quasi-architectural form that delineates the three-dimensional space in which it is located. Screen paintings not only have a decorative function, but also convey specific emotions and thoughts through the picture. For example, Wang Qihan, a painter of the Southern Tang Dynasty in the Fifth Century, depicted on the screen of his Kan Shu Tu, the idyllic scenery and the grassy hall symbolize his life of retreat in the mountains and the wilderness. Through the medium of the screen, the painter integrates natural scenery and figures into the interior environment, which not only expresses the elegance pursued by the literati, but also is a reflection of the literati's inner world.
Although the whole bookstore is a humanistic space, it cannot exist independently for the sake of mankind. Because it was originally a family shrine building, the patio is an important function of the building's internal lighting and ventilation, and it is also an important link connecting the indoor and outdoor areas, and between human beings and nature. Because it is exposed to the outdoors all year round, the floor of the patio has moss because of rainwater irrigation, and there are wild greenery growing at the drainage ditch in summer, which is the vitality of nature.
The eaves of the patio is a traditional Chinese concept of “Four Waters Returning to the Hall”, symbolizing the unity of the family and the gathering of wealth. Since the four waters return to the hall, where they return to is also a worthy design point. Entering the interior, we saw the return of the ground drainage ditch, we changed the original end of the platform, replaced by two lotus columns plinth structure of a long Bishan lapis lazuli, this piece of lapis lazuli is ten years ago LIBRAIRIE AVANT-GARDE（Bishan) purchased, after ten years of natural refinement of the cracks, in the process of handling and adjustment is still cracked, but cracked lapis lazuli appeared in its original appearance, the natural and has not been modified the texture of the stone, the moment felt that I felt at that moment that I had indeed returned to nature. The end of the “four waters return to the hall” is also found.
In addition to the patio, which faces nature, the interior also speaks the language of nature. Natural materials such as wood, bamboo, and stone are used to structure the interior itself. These materials not only have a natural beauty but also resonate with the environment. However, the bookcase wall uses a new material, white rammed earth material, which is used for the exterior wall material of the building. The aim is to ensure practicality and prevent too much humidity in the interior from affecting the cabinets, yet leaving no clear boundary between indoor and outdoor. The surface is artificially aged and will later grow to have its own flavor under time.
When I first arrived at Bishan, I found that every house in the village is situated in size, overlooking like a square superposition of different sizes, white walls and black tiles, lined up and staggered, rich in rhythm and dynamic visual effects. So in the design of this village planning form abstracted into a symbol, in the white bookcase wall open a staggered size of the box, so that visitors walking in the process of shopping for books, can feel a rhythm and order of the aesthetics.
On the second floor, the elements of the first floor were also continued, with white bookcase walls on the left and right sides, and boxes of different sizes were dug into the wall and embedded into the bookcases. After removing the original bookcases on the front of the second floor, the original brick wall was revealed in its original form, with various sizes of bricks and even some clashing colors, which was exactly the symbol of the village that we wanted, so we changed the original design to keep the brick wall, and hung a row of neatly arranged poems and excerpts on the wall. The ancient sense of rhythm and staggering, and the new addition of neat and unified verses, created a culture clash, just as we bring modern design into traditional architecture, seemingly a conflict is also a kind of integration.
The old building will leave a framework on which the new building will slowly penetrate, changing step by step. For this kind of building, people will build it step by step, change it step by step, and then dismantle it step by step. In this process, there is no concept of “sudden” time. Because there is no break in time, there is no beginning, there is no end, and the state of “completion” never occurs.