To build a church within a church: this was the intention of Wutopia Lab for one of Shanghai’s most emblematic bookstores. The first church addressed by the project is an Orthodox temple raised in 1932, the walls of which have been kept intact and the interior space cleared to fit in a second church: a cathedral of books, one that can take in a thousand volumes of poetry. To emphasize continuity between both ‘sacred’ spaces the intervention opted for permeability. By this we mean that daylight can shine down from the large windows of the original church and onto the new space as well; and also that visitors can simultaneously admire the eclectic old temple’s moldings and frescos in the background. This permeability is achieved by means of steel plates arranged in the manner of a whale’s skeleton, and rising all the way to the ceiling of the church, forming niches that at the bottom serve as bookshop shelves... [+]