Eight tenths Garden

Architect
Wutopia lab
A type
museum
Status
Implemented
Year
2016
Size
2000 sq.m.

Eight tenths Garden - "Garden of eight tenths" (that's right - with a space) - the concept of the art museum of art and crafts, which was completed in Shanghai in 2016, the architects of Wutopia lab based on the philosophical idea of ​​striving for a full life.  

The client of the project was one of the local collectors, a collector of ancient Chinese enamels. He wanted to make his extensive collection available to the public. On a plot of 2 square meters, the designers have created a space in which architecture and garden are a single whole.

Eight tenths Garden - includes a museum, a public cultural space with offices and a conference hall, a hotel, a cafe and even a library.

The construction was carried out on a triangular plot, where a shopping center had previously been located. The main object of the new complex was a cylindrical building, on the roof of which there is a hotel in the form of a traditional Chinese residential house-xiheyuan. The hotel building is surrounded by a wooden deck, and inside there is a garden with bonsai pines. Exhibition spaces are located on the first and second levels of the cylinder, and offices are located on the third floor. They are protected from the outside world by continuous glazing of the facade and a perforated aluminum "veil". In general, the complex represents a model of a "vertical city" in miniature - with a heavenly villa.

Residents and visitors of the museum can freely walk in the gardens - both on the roof and outside, designed in the national style - with picturesque stones and ponds.

The complex is protected from the aggressive street landscape by a grid with a vertical pattern along which conifers and bamboo are planted. Despite the fence, the complex is an accessible part of public space.

The gardens occupy about 80 percent of the total area of ​​the site - that is why the entire project and museum is called Eight tenths Garden. Thus, the architects wanted to remind about the role of nature in human life, and that most of us do not realize ourselves to the fullest.

The Shanghai architectural studio Wutopia lab was founded in 2013 by Yu Ting, one of the most influential architects in China. His philosophy is that the result of the entire professional process, rigorously calculated construction and design, should look as natural as possible - a relaxed and elegant gesture. "If this world is not good enough, let's create a better one," says Yu Tin, an architect and professor at the Academy of Architecture of the Southeast University.