BUZZ Büro Ziyu Zhuang 庄子玉工作室

The Cloud Maze

The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su

THE CLOUD MAZE

 RSAA / Büro Ziyu Zhuang

ARCHITECT
RSAA

LOCATION
Shanghai, China

CATEGORY
Installation

PROJECT YEAR
2019

PHOTOGRAPHS
Shengliang Su, Hui Zhang

LIGHTING CONSULTANTS
Chloe Zhang

CONSTRUCTION TEAM
Shanghai Biaoguan Exhibition Service Co., Ltd

PRINCIPAL DESIGNER
Ziyu Zhuang

STRUCTURE CONSULTANT
Yanghui Zhang

ILLUSTRATION
Rui Han

DESIGN TEAM
Fabian Wieser, Na Li, Kunyu Zhu, Xin Zhao, Ye Li, Yu Zhao, Jiaqi Jiang

Text description provided by architect.

Between 4th and 17th March, the event Design Shanghai @ Xintiandi Design Festival began as scheduled.

The topic of this year is to return the origin of social interactions-meet and acquaintance, which tries to encourage people to meet and grow in the real social interactions by a series of ways such as interactive installations, visual arts, and forums.

The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su

RSAA / Büro Ziyu Zhuang was invited to design the interactive installation at the entrance of Xintiandi, and this is the origin of The Cloud Maze.

The design team is looking forward to presenting the metaphor of a series of questions such as the meaning of individual in the city, the meaning of communication between people, the interpersonal behaviors, and the new urban space image built by human information.

What’s more, the designers expect participants to find answers to their hearts.

The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su

EARTH AND CLOUD

The installation is four meters high, with metal mesh curtains hanging in circular paths from a structural frame.

The curtains form a glossy surface, that filters the sun and creates a twilight.

The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su

The grey inside world is defined by both the real pattern of the mesh, as well as the virtual, projected pattern of the shadow.

This ambiguity is related to the meaning of a maze and links the material and construction to its plan.

The road ahead is unpredictable when you explore a city, it can lead you to your destination or to a dead end.

The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su

This installation reflects on that experience but does not look like it from afar.

Instead, it evokes connections to traditional Chinese landscape paintings and the shape of mountains and clouds.

This is a metaphor to the urban Xanadu. The people who are trapped in the maze overlap with the mountains and clouds and integrate into different forms.

The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su

Mountains are formed by rock and soil, yet look like clouds. The combination characters for earth and cloud in the Chinese alphabet forms the character Tan: 坛.

CITY

The installation follows the archetype of a maze, a circular labyrinth with a diameter of five meters where people will – depending on the path they choose - miss or meet.

The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su

Depending on the height of a section, different floorplans will present themselves, offering different ways through the labyrinth.

This means people of different age and height will have different possibilities of interaction and contact in it.

The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su

Different for everyone, the maze blocks views or offers paths, encouraging people to explore the ups and downs of the folds of the form.

The maze is a microcosm of the city, where people meet or separate. Over the last decades, strangers more and more met and became acquainted online.

Nowadays people are looking for ways to reverse this trend, and return to real life and re-recognize themselves in this metaphorical city. This is the meaning of 城.

The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su


The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su
The Cloud Maze
The Cloud Maze
© Shengliang Su


The Cloud Maze
The diagram
The Cloud Maze
Rendering of the installation
The Cloud Maze
Expansion diagram
The Cloud Maze
The facades


The Cloud Maze
The diagram


The Cloud Maze
Image Courtesy of RSAA/ Büro Ziyu Zhuang

The Cloud Maze
Exploded diagram

BUZZ Büro Ziyu Zhuang 庄子玉工作室
T +86 10 8592 5380 F +86 10 85925380
BUZZ Büro Ziyu Zhuang 庄子玉工作室
No.7 Dongjiaogan Hutong, Xicheng District, Beijing, China 100009 北京市西城区东轿杆胡同7号