Yixing Bookstore / SEU-ARC + Nanjing Concord Design & Engineerings

Text description provided by the architects. Located in Dingshu, Yixing, the bookstore is the end note of the tour-route of Gunan Street. The project provides a public space on the west side of Gunan Street and improves the quality of life in communities with outdated facilities to a certain extent. Although around the site are dilapidated low-rise pitched roof house, they clearly show the relationship between the gables and wooden structures in the local traditional houses.

Responding to the relationship with the site, this project hopes to rethink and transform the traditional elements with new configuration of space and structure, which also contribute to the integrated experience between interior and exterior space when crossing a series of glabes. In addition, the porous wooden shelves act as both facade elements and dividers, meanwhile, become the guiding clues of architectural experience.

As a famous “pottery city”, pottery pots are often used as building materials in the dwellings of Dingshu Town. These pottery pots combine different types of stone to form a unique wall texture through different stacking methods. The project also used this material and texture as one of the ways to respond to the site.