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Artworks
Weishan Chongzheng Academy Bookstore of Librairie Avant-Garde / Chinese Mainland
Trace Architecture Office (TAO) / Chinese MainlandFurther images
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DFA Design for Asia Awards 2025 l Gold Award l Spatial Design l Culture & Public Spaces
Passage of Light
Anchored within the ancient fabric of Weishan, this renovation breathes new rhythm into a Ming Dynasty academy through an architecture of lightness and restraint. Two slender, steel-framed book galleries extend along the site’s east–west axis, hovering between courtyards like luminous bridges that stitch history to the present. Their diagonally tapered interiors draw the eye into a vanishing point—an illusion of depth that turns each step into a quiet pilgrimage through knowledge. The outer façades descend in gentle terraces, serving as exhibition shelves and stepped seating for an outdoor theatre shaded by centuries-old trees. At the eastern end, a cylindrical pavilion rises in counterpoint to the traditional gabled roof, its sunken glass base revealing vibrant interiors to the passing street. Materials echo the past in tone and tactility: fair-faced concrete imprinted with pine-grain texture, brushed steel, and warm wood coalesce into a language both delicate and enduring—a living dialogue between earth, memory, and time.
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