ChunYangTai Arts and Cultural Centre

Introduction

ChunYangTai is the project’s signature landmark.

This newly-built arts and cultural center was designed by Architect Yung Ho Chang and the Atelier Feichang Jianzhu (FCJZ) and covers a total area of 8,602 square meters. Located at the entrance of Langtou Village, ChunYangTai complements and harmonizes with the surrounding architecture, and serves as an important public plaza in the largest well-preserved national-level historical village of the Pearl River Delta region.

ChunYangTai houses a number of multifunctional cultural activity spaces, including five cultural exhibition halls, a library, a rare book room, two reading rooms, a theater, a space for arts and crafts, etc. ChunYangTai, founded on full respect for local culture, provides the villagers with a brand new venue for their cultural activities and aims to become an important part of the revitalization of the ancient village and the countryside writ large.

Design Concept

The 700 years old ancient village of Langtou is located in the northern suburbs of Guangzhou. As a well-known "accomplished scholars village", Langtou has a large number of well-preserved old architectural spaces. ChunYangTai is situated in a lotus pond right outside the ancient village.

Establishing connections with the scale and layout of the ancient village, the program of the complex – exhibition spaces, library, theater, research studios, and café – are dispersed into ten individual small building units. Building units are connected by "towers" with curvilinear brick walls and form alleys and courtyards of intimate sizes in between.We have placed nearly 30 groups of planted water ponds on the roofs of buildings; the lush aquatic plants, primarily waterlilies, do not only form a natural landscape but also reduce the energy consumption of the buildings. The roof ponds, connected by elevated walkways, along with the ponds, both designed and natural ones, in the sunken courtyards and in the surrounding areas, create a "multi-level lotus pond system" that blends into the environment.

Local red tiles and traditional grey bricks are chosen the main building materials, together with exposed concrete, to create a local cultural facility that is rooted in Langtou tradition.

Name Origin

“ChunYangTai” is the name of the study of the great Lingnan scholar Chen Xianzhang (1428-1500). It, along with the inscription “The Sun Shines Forever” carved on the gate of Langtou’s Jingwei Pavilion, seems to establish a dialogue across time and space, jointly conveying an abundance of vitality. ChunYangTai is built on a lotus pond, resembling a raised platform, which matches the description in Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi(The earliest dictionary in China) that a “platform” is a vantage point overlooking all four directions. The region of Lingnan is abundantly vibrant; as the Song Dynasty poet Mei Yaochen writes, “as the spring sun nurtures the flora, everything becomes beautiful at the same time”. Hence comes the name “ChunYangTai”.