Chinese museum encloses disused mine in ceramic sculpture

Atelier Xük has evoked the blue-violet hues of Dingshu ceramics to valorize a former mine, through a museum concept that connects underground tunnels with sculptural volumes.

In the south-east of the city of Yixing, near Dingshu (known in China as the “capital of ceramics”), Atelier XÜK with Architecture School of Southeast University has designed a building which is a tribute to the productive and artistic-cultural tradition of the area, renowned for centuries for the extraction and processing of a precious type of clay (Zisha) used to make ceramics with a characteristic purplish hue.

The museum dedicated to the natural Zisha springs of Mount Huanglong is located near the remains of mine “No. 4”, which was built in 1972 and operated until 1997. Following the Yixing municipal government's designation of the area as a listed site in 2009, Atelier XÜK's recent intervention is intended to celebrate the historical memory of the place but also to enhance its attractiveness on a broad scale through the creation of a new exhibition area and a public place open to the entire community.

The aim of the project was to reclaim and valorize the mine ruins by including them in an open-air exhibition track integrated with the indoor gallery spaces through a system of paths and perspective views.

The complex is made up of an aggregation of five essential volumes of different sizes and heights that evoke the petals of a flower (as a symbol of luck, in Chinese culture) and wrap around and around the mine's traces at the underground level: a vortex-shaped exhibition route, starting from the surface, leading to the bowels of the earth and back, connects the three ground floor halls and the underground mine tunnel in a single sequence enriched by multimedia contributions.

On the outside, the imposing architecture – recalling the conformation and colours of the nearby mountains – is tempered by the glazed tile cladding in variegated hues that refer to the five shades of the local clay and become alive with changing light reflections across the day.

Project leaders: Xu Zhang, Kenan Liu Client: Construction Bureau of Dingshu Town Historical research and concept: Xu Zhang, Yang Shen Project team: Xiaoxia Shi, Yiming Yang, Shiyun Sun, Lanxi Li, Hua Xu, Yin Song, Tianze Yu, Tao Zhang, Ang Li, Xinqi Dong, Tong Niu (Intern), Yuanlanyi Zhao (Intern) Interiors and exhibition: Fengyuzhu Interiors consultant: Atelier XÜK Landscape architecture: Atelier XÜK