Jiangsu Garden Expo Treasure Pavilion

Located at the edge of the Expo Park, the Treasure Pavilion is surrounded by a very conflictingenvironment：on its north side, the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train constantly runs by ; on its south side, right across a river, there is the VOCO Nanjing Garden Expo, a quiet and pleasant small scale village-sense apartment hotel complex. The city and the village collide on this marginal plot.

Architecture design continues the site context by spatial folding. Starting from the area, the site, the pathway, and the material, the design talks about the relationship between building and site, plans visiting and wandering pathways, and incorporates the memory and timeliness into the space.

Due to urban expansion and ecological conservation, the Chinese Cement Factoryonce famous in the industry, was closed and relocated away in recent years. The construction of the Garden Expo Park now becomes a sustainable strategy for the city development . Previous production of cement and mining makes a flat and low-lying terrain center in the Garden Expo Park, while the surroundings are all covered with mountains.

Facing the challenges created by the site, the architects adoptthe strategy of “heaviness", sinking the building into the site and merging it with the land. The “Folding” idea creates a rich roof/ground form while the building itself becomes a piece of fragment on the land. Several free broken lines dividethe roof/ground from east to west into three parts, with different heights and nested to each other. The east and west ends are slightly raised up, and the footpaths wedgeinto the upturned volume from different directions, while the central zigzag naturally connects the entrance square with the roof garden.

The connection between the building and the site is reflected in two ways of "being seen". While viewing the building from the Beijing and Shanghai high-speed railway, people can see winding rust-red folded walls, changing light and shadows, and linear arrangements of green plants, all becoming the natural strokes on the canvas of the earth. The building’s fifth facade — the roof, opens freely to the sky. While walk-on the landscape steps from the sunken courtyard and then zigzag several times to the second floor’s rooftop, the high-view bending integrates into the flat and open earth.

The center of the wall goes gently, while the two ends are slightly raised up, just like the view surrounded by undulating mountains.

Different from the building’s freely opened roof, which enjoys abundant views, the four elevations connecting the Pavilion to the ground are deliberately weakened, but still very powerful， just like Richard Serra's tension-filled rust-steel sculptures.

The design presents the site construction in a three-dimensional way. It establishes the relationships in-between space and earth from different perspectives, such as high point, near point, and far point. On the basis of fully expressing its own characteristics, the building naturally merges into the site.

To view the Pavilion, there are two visiting routes: the inner route is the one to see exhibitions, and the outer route is for sightseeing in the roof garden. The two routes together form a continuous Mobius circle.

The Pavilion’s main entrance is set on the east side of Huatian Road. After walking across the plaza, and going through the opening on an L-shaped parapet, visitors enter the main structure.

It first starts from a deep doorway, then slowly goes into the bright front yard, which can be regarded as the prelude to the exhibition hall. After passing through a series of transitions, it reaches the exhibition entrance.

People who enter the front yard meet with those who return back from the roof garden, indicating a continuous designed path starts here. At this point, the entering process is truly completed.

The outer routing starts from a landscape of steps at the underground southwest side corner, then goes west towards the first-floor yard, retraces to the east and takes steps up to the first-floor rooftop, tours the roof garden guided by the folding walls, and finally returns back to the entrance front yard.

The crustal movement forms rock strata. The strata in the Jiangsu Garden Expo area mainly appear as yellow or blue, supplemented by some dark purple and grey red parts. The original section of the rock strata is well kept at the No.1 Garden Expo Garden Entrance area.

Formerly, there were quarry pits and industrial plants in the Garden Expo area, and the industrial remains become the unique memory of the site. Due to the geological and remaining industrial significance of the site, the building was expected to be covered by a unique material, to show a sense of temporality.

On the inside part, the corten steel plate walls facing the inner courtyard are carpeted with metal lattice. Below that lattice, the ivies are quietly budding and climbing up, showing their vigorous and exuberant vitality. Before long, these green ivies will cover up the whole courtyards. In the past, people were mining here and left those mine outages which became the scars on the earth.

Geographical folding grows terrains. Spatial folding creates sequences. Time folding returns back to primitive. The “Folding” concept applied in the Treasure Pavilion has multiple significances.