Location: Liling, China.

Architect: Archea Associati.

Archea Associati designed a masterplan, architectural, and interior design for the Liling World Ceramic Art City in Hunan, China. The project is a new city section dedicated to ceramic art, where the relationship between architecture, urban space, and the material made by the company and industrial tradition merge into one. The project started with examining the ceramic materials made in the area to highlight their features, differences in color, and workmanship. The city is designed to be flexible, with interchangeable parts, where the spaces could be an evocative sequence in which visitors are in the “between” space, having an experience of being in between the city space. The city has pedestrian streets where pedestrians can go in the spaces waiting to be discovered. Within these places, there are additional spaces focused on ceramic arts, intended to teach about how this great tradition of making and decorating ceramics works. The hotel’s guests will have the experience of staying in a building that is simultaneously a large container. Spatially, it is an artistic installation. The project aims to attract tourists and revitalize the great tradition of Chinese ceramic art. The Ceramic Art City of Li Ling is not merely a part of a city or an industrial exhibition complex. As its name suggests, it is much more than this. It is a place and home of ceramic art, where industrial, cultural and production traditions merge with the expectations to see and learn of the visitors who are sure to be drawn to this city. The project site for the new glaze city is of 433.335 sqm. Hunan Liling Ceramic Manufacturing, which lies in the famous Porcelain City of Liling City, Hunan Province, is the city’s leading enterprise. The company has introduced advanced production equipment and applies it to the raw materials with a high-technology production process and a strict quality control system for the entire process.

Photo credit: Cristiano Bianchi.