Zhang Yan Cultural Museum in Shanghai
As if it were the phoenix bird, Horizontal Design, the architecture studio founded by Ju Bin , it has been proposed to revive from their ashes the constructions that give life to the China's historic rural settlements.
"Preservation, Growth and Expansion" is the motto under which the Horizontal Design team is executing said strategy. Preserve the history of the ancient town; naturally grow a dilapidated building , retaining its functional parts; and build new modules , are the main objectives.
Zhangyan's village
“Our strategy it does not claim to rebuild or repair the old. Rather, it strives to follow the historical development and context in order to put contemporary needs and awareness in the people, to rearrange layout , program commercial ecology and create a dialogue between the new and the old” , they point out from the architecture studio.
As part of a new suburban development policy, the renovation and rehabilitation of Zhang Yan village , located in Qingpu -a district of Shanghai-, has started with the creation of the Zhang Yan Cultural Museum.
Respect the essence of a locality that can boast of being the cradle of ancient shanghai culture, as well as being the cultural representation of fuquan mountain, it was essential.
Zhang Jie, Su Shi, Ren Renfa, and Mi Fu were some of the renowned writers who found inspiration in this thousand-year-old village, which stood on the banks of the waters of the Tang and Song dynasties.
Due to the rural exodus, Zhang Yan currently has hardly any young population and their two- or three-story houses, built after the founding of the People's Republic of China, suffer great deterioration.
The site where the museum has been installed not only had the foundations of the old stone house, but also contained big empty spaces where many have been built contemporary buildings.
The ruins of the old building have been respected
The white concrete artistic temple is made up of the Hall of People's History, the home of the Zhang family -a house from the end of the Qing dynasty, currently in ruins- and an open space. On the other hand, Exhibition halls of the museum consist of three spaces and a water court.
Due to the serious deterioration of the Zhang family's house, only the outer wall could be preserved, harboring inside the "Contemporary" exhibition hall. This room maintains a displacement of 30 centimeters to respect the old construction.
Compared, the village history room has been better preserved. Its internal wooden structure was repaired, the partitions were removed and the original atrium was preserved.
At the same time, the hall houses a second exhibition space that answers the topic "Tradition". In this room, the floor was renewed with anodized aluminum plates, resistant to humidity, and the walls, the ceiling and the atrium were preserved.
“During our investigation of the Town Hall of History, we discovered that historically there had been another building to the north. For this reason, the third exhibition hall, that of the "Future", is built from renovation of the original site , count from Horizontal Design.
One of the bright rooms of the museum
To do this, they resorted to Anodized aluminum , present both on the floor and on the ceiling; a uniformity that aims to provide a sense of the future.
The outside area of the third exhibition hall remains open space: the ancient trees and bamboos of the place and a water patio enhance the attractiveness of what is intended to be a leisure area for the villagers.
water yard
“The location of the cultural museum is representative of the genealogy of the buildings of the town”, concludes the Horizontal Design team, which has shown that past and present can coexist harmoniously.