The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
one high and one low courtyards interweave together. Image © Zhuoying Wu

THE TAOZHU RED MEMORIAL RENOVATION

Atelier Yipan

CATEGORY
Museum

LOCATION
Shaoxing, China

YEAR
2021

PHOTOGRAPHS
Zhuoying Wu

LEAD ARCHITECT
Chenjun Dai

DESIGN TEAM
Chenjun Dai, Zhuoying Wu

ENGINEERING DESIGN
Tianhong Wang, Wenchao Song

AREA
1238 m²

THE CLIENT
TaoZhu Street Government of ZhuJi

HEAD OF PLANNING & CURATOR
Zhefeng Qiu, Xiu Liu

CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTOR
Zhejiang Hongkun Construction Group Co. LTD

CONSTRUCTION DRAWING DESIGN
Tongchuang engineering design co. ltd.

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The bird view. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The plan photo . Image © Zhuoying Wu

Text description provided by architect.

The project is located in Taozhu street, zhuji, Zhejiang, which used to be a temporary sales office of Xiangsheng real estate.

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The village, surrounded by urban development. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Street corner in the morning. Image © Zhuoying Wu

In 2020, the building was acquired by the local government to serve as a local memorial museum for Taozhu.

The irregular shape of the original land use scope was not continued utilized in the land transfer examination and approval.

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The relationship between Northeast main entrance and the street. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Relationship between southeast entrance and volume. Image © Zhuoying Wu

The property line in this project can only be a rectangular area within the existing wall, and 15 meters width of public space should be left on the east side.

Within the limits of the building property line, we added two volumes to the site: a management room for the office and a public toilet. Mr. Qiu, the main planner of this Memorial, mentioned that "local memory should be traced back to the memory of the local earth".

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Looking at the entrance courtyard wall from the East inner courtyard. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Looking back at the street from the inner courtyard. Image © Zhuoying Wu

As far as the history of physical space form is concerned, Zhuji is a typical water town in the south of the Yangtze River, and the "courtyard" is the prototype of its space.

We take the ‘interwoven courtyard’ as the design concept and hope to create a spatial experience by entering the alley of the village from the city street and then returning to the terrace courtyard of home by the courtyard space interwoven with warp and weft.

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Looking at the museum from the inner courtyard. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The separation between two new volumes. Image © Zhuoying Wu

In this way, the design can carry the path, experience, and emotions of visitors. The tiered courtyards spread out from the streets of the city, welcoming citizens from the streets into the site in different gestures.

Different outdoor courtyards, with different scales and turns in different directions, lead into the exhibition hall.

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
courtyard. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The courtyard. Image © Zhuoying Wu

After entering the main exhibition hall, different scales of the exhibition halls interweave and connect with each other, slowly unfold.

The light gradually enters the exhibition hall from the top, the sides, and the distance, and the atmosphere created by the light and shade continuously unfolds in the diagonal space, and the tension of the space is constantly presented.

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The lobby . Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Looking at the Red memory hall from the City exhibition hall. Image © Zhuoying Wu

End up with the visit of the museum and return back to the outdoor, there is an introverted and quiet square courtyard, where the emotions after the visiting can be released and the inner peace can be obtained.

Due to the change of the function, we wanted to minimize the commercial atmosphere of the original building, but at the same time, we didn't want the original building to disappear completely.

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The remaining steel column . Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
the remaining structure and the top light. Image © Zhuoying Wu

We believe that even though the original building is temporary, it was a "memory" of a time on the site.

Therefore, we adopted a series of strategies to establish the relationship between the new and old buildings: masking, exposing, breaking, standing, separating, and stretching.

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Top light and side light of courtyard. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The relationship between exhibition hall and outdoor space. Image © Zhuoying Wu

The exterior walls of the old houses are white with gray, forming the keynote of the villages in the South of the Yangtze River.

We use dark gray art print as the background color, then spray white paint.

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The detail node of wall and floor. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
One worker walking in the exhibition hall. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Light court, courtyard wall shielding the original building . Image © Zhuoying Wu

Because the strength of the wall absorbing coating is random and uneven, the exterior wall effect of the gray change is formed.


The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Space between solid volume and courtyard wall. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Space between solid volume and courtyard wall. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The texture of wall. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The texture of wall. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Stretching. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The texture of wall. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Diagonal space. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The space between the physical volume and the original building . Image © Zhuoying Wu


The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
the East Facade. Image Courtesy of Atelier Yipan
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
the North Facade. Image Courtesy of Atelier Yipan
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
the South Facade. Image Courtesy of Atelier Yipan
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
the West facade. Image Courtesy of Atelier Yipan
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
section. Image Courtesy of Atelier Yipan
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
section. Image Courtesy of Atelier Yipan


The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Aerial photo of the site. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The property line of building. Image © Zhuoying Wu

The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
masterplan. Image Courtesy of Atelier Yipan
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
Aerial photo of the site. Image © Zhuoying Wu
The Taozhu Red Memorial Renovation
The layout detail of bricks. Image Courtesy of Atelier Yipan