In the beginning, the architect received the original commission to design a 300-square-meter public building for facilitating the county’s culture and art education. However, considering the vast serving area and the difficulty of traveling between scattered villages, the architect came up with a proposal to divide one building into a series of miniature facilities in different locations so as to better serve local communities.
As a result, one of the series, "Library in Ruins", is constructed alongside the remnant of an adobe house in Sunyao Old Village which is located in a mountainous area far away from the town. Villagers were no longer able to find any craftsman who could build with the original rammed earth technique. Therefore, the architect proposed to build a new concrete structure to grow from the old ruins: allowing the new building to become a spatial device where people enter the ruins, jump over the old houses, and gaze into the village, the fields, and the mountains in the distance.
Furthermore, the architect hopes to present a duet of intertwined memories in this building: On the one hand, it connects cave dwellings, barren hills, and earth walls– physical remains with heavy texture and traces of time; On the other hand, it becomes an abstract sculptural space that grows from the terrain and rises to the sky.
The undulating outline of the roof echoes the terrain and distant mountains. The interior space functions serves as a stepped library and also a small projection room.
On the east and west facades, large windows are designed to greet the idyllic, leafy surroundings. Many special-shaped windows are cast with in-situ concrete on the north and south facades. These irregularly shaped openings curate a play of shadow during the day, and create a backdrop of twinkling lights throughout the night.
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