Location: Nanping, China.

Architects: UAD Architects.

The Shunchang Museum is located in Shunchang County, Nanping City in Fujian Province. It is sited in a core urban area, with its south side facing Longshan Mountain and the north side adjoining a waterfront walking trail along Futun Stream. The architects engaged in functional planning and positioning and added some extra functions such as an auditorium, book bar and cafe. The architectural design was shifted to let the building integrate into citizens’ daily life and carry the memory and nostalgic sentiments of locals. The design strategies include a “traversable urban garden”, an “urban living room”, a large transitional space, and visiting routes.

The design team organized the main entrances of the museum and the urban planning exhibition center, and considered the possibility for the independent use of the temporary exhibition hall and the auditorium. The visiting routes of the museum and the urban planning exhibition center are centered on their comprehensive halls, and the connecting space between the museum and the urban planning exhibition center is a cultural & book bar. The urban terrace connects to the riverside walking path and provides a panoramic view of the mountainous county. The preserved tree is a symbol of the site’s memory and is a witness that carries stories of the small county both in the past and future. The “urban living room” adopts a frame-shear wall structure and curved trusses to create an open column-free space on the ground floor.

Materials such as stones, glass and specular stainless steel panels are used to form a simplistic, massive yet modern architectural image. Granites are applied to the main building body and the walls of the museum’s comprehensive hall, each piece of which has a size of 1,000mm x 300mm and a thickness of 120mm, cut manually. The rough wall textures respond to the local mountains, creating a unique charm between gracefulness and solidness.

Photo credit: Zhao Qiang.