An unsuspecting village located approximately 40 kilometers from Beijing is home to a population of over 200 Chinese artists being represented by major galleries in the United States, France and Germany, among other places. While having achieved a critical notoriety at an international scale, the community still lacks any public institution or setting to celebrate public events, and as a result, a consortium or artists and critics decided to create a new art center. The complex shall comprise a gallery, studios, housing for artists and administrative spaces. An existing brick wall divides the plot into two: a barren industrial field on one side and a hypostyle grid of trees on the other.

Two different pieces address the needs of the project: one, the artist’s house (already built), and the other, the complex itself. This second piece is configured around a central courtyard that frames the views of the trees. The building has other courtyards to organize both the interior and the exterior spaces. A series of alleyways conceived as cracks or slots connect the courtyards giving rise to a sequence that operates analogously to the urbanistic grain of Tongxian, albeit in a highly transformed manner... [+]