Art Center, Tongxian
Office dA 

Art Center, Tongxian

Office dA 


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... [+]


Cliente Client

Tongxian Art Center

Arquitectos Architects

Office dA (M. Ponce de Leon, Nader Tehrani)

Colaboradores Collaborators

Jeff Asanza, Timothy Clark (coordinadores de proyecto project coordinators), Hansy Luz Better, Christine Mueller, Chris Orsega, Tali Buchler, Abeer Seikaly, Chris Arner, Albert García, Kristen Giannattasio, Achille Rossini, Hamad Al-Sultan, Hadijanto JoJo