Wuxi Meili Site Museum by Institute of Architectural History, CADG + Atelier Diameter, ZSA

Overview
Wuxi Meli Site Museum is located in the ancient town of Meili, with the millennia-old Taibo Temple sitting on its west side and Bodu River flowing on the north side. The Meili site unearthed during the ancient town development dates back to the Shang and Zhou dynasties. It seems to be destined to add a footnote to the stories of “Taibo Running to Wu” and “the Beginning of Jiangnan” through thousands of years. The design of the project, which is less than 2,000 square meters due to its location, has therefore, from start to finish, centered around telling the founding story of Wu culture.

Symbiosis
The Wuxi Meili Site Museum, built for the archaeological site of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, is situated in an urban built-up area and amongst archaized commercial buildings of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is particularly worth exploring which direction the architectural design should head towards: should the style of the museum imitate the pre-Qin period or match the Ming and Qing dynasties? Should the main function of the museum be historic exhibitions or commercial activities as a part of the district? Furthermore, how should the ancient site adjacent to the riverbank be integrated into modern community-based everyday life?
With careful deliberation, the project team clarified the concept of the design:
1. From the perspective of architectural history, the Shang and Zhou period architectural image lacks support from clear existing documents while the cultural vein of the commercial district imitating the Ming and Qing dynasties is ambiguous. Thus, neither of the styles is suitable for the project. The final design concept is based on a modern architectural style, in reflection of the contemporary interpretation of heritage and the building technology excellence, while maintaining a close tie with the public life in adjacent urban areas.
2. Being a public welfare project in a commercial district, the museum should manifest its academic value in cultural heritage interpretation, its compatibility with the commercial district, and its essential role as a public space, establishing the connection between academia and the public.
3. The project is in the center of a commercial district. The form and the volume of the building should give due consideration to the texture and the scale of the district and harmonize with the surrounding buildings.
The three confirmed ideas guided the paths for the sequent design and gained full understanding and support from the client. The project progressed smoothly in all aspects including the refinement of the scheme, the multi-disciplinary integrated design of the construction plan, and the construction process.

Space
The building’s layout of the internal and external space is organized around the designed visitor flow. The museum is of a modest scale. According to the conventional proportion of the functional areas in a museum, the display area of a 2,000 square meters museum should be around 1,000 square meters, including a large exhibition hall for the archaeological site. Therefore, the flow of the visitors is designed to be a single line, along which different themes of the exhibition are presented in sequence according to the curation. Visitors can thus walk all the way from the entrance to the exit without having to backtrack.
The difficulty of the project is that the entrance of the building is at the street corner of the commercial district central square, which is away from the Bodu River, while the site pit is situated close to the riverbank. The tour flow needs to connect all exhibition halls and finally circle back to the central square side. After repeatedly laying out all the possible plans with consideration of the indoor exhibition curation, the team adopted a rotating route design which links the upper and lower floor and connects all exhibition halls. After exiting from the cultural and creative gift shop on the second floor, visitors can walk past the rooftop viewing deck above the site exhibition hall and go downstairs back to the museum entrance, completing a full tour circle with a rich and diverse experience.
The single-sided sloped roof of the museum provides an opportunity to set up a two-story atrium for exhibition, making the space more flexible. Outside the building, a shared open space has been created on the second floor under the pitched roof at the exit, which offers visitors shelter from wind and rain and a viewing platform for watching water shows on the nearby river. The open-air space also contradicts the building volume, demonstrating the aesthetic value of blankness and fullness, transparent and vivid, fitting the climate characteristics of the Jiangnan region. In addition, the roof platform is a perfect outdoor venue for enjoying the river view. By “lifting” the public square up to the roof level, it returns the space occupied by the building to the public.

Material
The main exterior material of the museum, except for the standing seam charcoal grey metal roof panels that imitate traditional Chinese blue tiles, is grey tuff (travertine). The main reason for choosing this material is that its blue-grey color with calming and delicate texture matches the “historical sense” embedded in the building.
As previously mentioned, the buildings in the commercial district mostly imitate the traditional residential architecture style featured with white walls, dark roofs, and wooden windows commonly seen in the Jiangnan region. In order to distinguish the museum from these background buildings while remaining consistent in style, the grey tuff was chosen. Its transitioning grey color between black and white alleviates the abruptness of the architectural form and helps the building blend in with the ambient environment.
Treated with different polishing measures, the grey stone is able to show various shades of color. Stones used on different sections of the wall were intentionally assigned five (later simplified to three) specifications of width and length. Combinations of stones in diverse colors and specifications bring about vivid, delicate, and natural variations of the entire wall. The horizontally drawn wall slits resemble the overlapping strata, which is also a metaphor for the archaeological work done on the site. On rainy days, the slightly porous and not very hard stone displays dry and wet changes subjecting to the weather conditions, adding a touch of the dense and lingering ambience that fits the temperament of the Jiangnan water town.

History
The ultimate goal of building the Meili Site Museum is to preserve the site and interpret it to the public. With this in mind, the exhibition and display design of the project is also a significant part of the process. During the architectural design stage, the visiting flow and the spatial changes were fully considered with corresponding exhibition and display techniques. Therefore, the overall narrative framework has largely been completed in the exhibition and display design process.
The exhibition is divided into six sections: “Prologue”, “Fragments of Treasured Relics”, “Taibo Running to Wu”, “The Greatest State of Virtue”, “Vicissitudes of Time”, and “The Site”. In the permanent exhibition hall, starting from the process of the archaeological excavation, multiple aspects of the Meili site are introduced, including the origin of the settlement, cultural exchange, excavated artifacts, historical legends, the canal environment, and cultural spirit. With the application of modern exhibition technologies such as transparent displays, electronic sand tables, multimedia screens, etc., the stories of the site are told more vividly. Leaving the permanent exhibition hall, visitors can walk along the ramp to the glass box-like screening room to watch films. After the film screening, the transformation of the energized glass will bring a little surprise to the audience by smoothly switching to the site environment. In the site exhibition hall, people can experience the site on the surrounding walkways and read about the site from the didactic panels. Through the glass wall, visitors can also overlook the ancient Bodu River, which is closely related to the formation of the site.
The floors and walls inside the exhibition halls are mainly in dark and light grey, aiming for simplicity and elegance to set off the excavated artifacts and didactic panels that are the absolute highlights of the museum. In the meantime, the contrast between black texts and white walls echoes the Jiangnan impressions.

Community
New buildings in modern urban development, regardless of their types, should contribute to community empowerment and public communication. The Meili Site Museum, which locates right amid a new commercial district that was built to boost the economy and stimulate consumption, bears an unshrinkable responsibility to do so. Therefore, one of the initial design objectives is to create an open space for the community in addition to the museum. The open space should be accessible to anyone at any time, giving the urban space back to the people.
The exhibition hall of the site is an ideal venue for a rooftop plaza owing to its adjacency to the Bodu River and function as a joint at the exit of the museum. Despite the limited area, the roof platform has incorporated landscape design to look more similar to a ground-level plaza. In addition to the planting of small shrubs, observation windows have been specially set up for people to experience the site below. The platform is open 24 hours a day. People can reach the platform via the stairs on both the east and west sides from the street without passing through the museum. The grand staircase on the west side also has a ramp embedded along the stairs with deep threads designed as bleachers for people to sit on and watch the water show. The ramp is convenient for residents in wheelchairs or parents carrying baby strollers. On one side of the roof terrace, a wooden resting platform has been set up in conjunction with the sloped roof of the building, creating more possibilities for activities in this place. It is however a pity that the terrace could not further be connected to the nearby arched bridge and commercial buildings to open up a richer recreational open space.
To the north side of the site exhibition hall stretches a narrow path along the river. We managed to keep a triangular area in the middle section of the path by retreating the exterior wall of the exhibition hall, creating not only an emergency evacuation exit for the museum, but also an extension node on the waterfront path, which provides visitors with a rest place and prevents the oppression feeling of the building against the riverside path. The triangular outdoor area is intentionally separated by floor-to-ceiling glass (facing north, no direct sunlight through the glass wall will damage the site). People walking by may be surprised by the exhibition of the ancient site and the modern commercial district on the two sides of the glass wall. A wall pulls thousands of years apart, asking what does history mean to us today?

Project Name: Wuxi Meili Site Museum
Location: In Meili Ancient Town, Xinwu District, Wuxi, Jiangsu
Area: 1937.55㎡
Design Period: January 2019 - September 2020
Construction Period: August 2020 - September 2022

Client: Meicun Community Service Center of Xinwu District, Wuxi
Design Companies:
Institute of Architectural History，China Architecture Design & Research Group (Conceptual Design, Interior and Exhibition Planning and Design, Construction Coordination)
E-mail: liujian@cadg.cn
Atelier Diameter, ZSA (Design Development, Construction Drawings, Landscape Design, Construction Coordination)
E-mail: atelierdiameter@126.com

Design Principals:
Jian Liu, Jiabao Wu (Institute of Architectural History, CADG); Nan Zhang, Xiaoyuan Zhang (Atelier Diameter, ZSA)
Design Team:
Institute of Architectural History, CADG: Xiaopeng Chen, Wenjie Lv (Architectural Design);
Atelier Diameter, ZSA : Yang Chen, Lu Gan, Yaqi Yu, Qi Feng, Jingrui Guo, Shuting Huang, Yi Tang (Architectural Design); Xiaohui Tang, Zheng Shi, Zheng Zhao(Structural Engineering); Renwei Ou, Huijie Zhang (Landscape Design); Zhiquan Pang, Juanru Tian, Rubo Zhang, Zibin Yu (Plumbing Engineering); Qiuxiang An, Haoran Ma, Jianwei Wang (HVAC Engineering); Yingjun Zhou, Hexun Yang, Chun Gao (Electrical Engineering); Li Wang, Benchi Yan, Jinhui Xu (General Layout Design); Chao Li (Energy Saving Design)

Curatorial Consultant & Exhibition Design: China Architecture Design Institute Co. Ltd, Beijing Truebond Building Decoration Engineering Co.,Ltd., YUniverse Design Office
Exhibition Planning: China Architecture Design Institute Co. Ltd, Beijing Liucai Workshop Culture Development Co., Ltd.
Exhibition Multimedia Design: Shandong Chaoqi Culture Communication Co., Ltd.
Curtain Wall Design: Shanghai Geometry Archi-Design Consulting Co., Ltd.

General Contractor: Wuxi Juntai Real Estate Development Co., Ltd.
Contractor of Main Structure: Jiangsu Wuxi Er-Jian Construction Group Co., Ltd.
Contractor of Exhibition: Beijing Truebond Building Decoration Engineering Co.,Ltd.
Contractor of Curtain Walls: Meihua Construction Group Co., Ltd.
Construction Materials and Companies:
Lighting Brand: ERCO
Showcase Brand: Zhongbi
Titanium Zinc Roof Panels Brand: Verozinc

Photo Credits: Yang Chen (whyseeimage.com)
Translation: Yining Su