Shanghai studio Roarc Renew has slotted two sweeping brick corridors between a pair of disused granaries in Jiaxing, China, to create the TaoCang Art Centre.
Located in the old village of Wangjiangjing in the Zhejiang province, the art gallery was developed as a landmark for the area while demonstrating how new life can be given to old buildings.
Roarc Renew‘s design celebrates the architecture of the brick granaries, which were built in the 1950s to store grains, and enlivens them with two complementary corridors that are lined with arches and curve up towards the sky.
TaoCang Art Center comprises sweeping brick corridors and two old granaries
“The two granaries witnessed the development of the whole town,” Roarc Renew told Dezeen.
“So we want to protect this memory in an architectural way, rather than destroying everything,” the studio explained. “There are less and less ancient brick buildings in China now. We should learn and protect more.”
The corridors curve upwards where they meet between the old buildings
TaoCang Art Centre encompasses 2,448 square meters, with the two granaries functioning as its main exhibition spaces. One will be used as a commercial gallery, and the other as an art gallery.
The external brick corridors that Roarc Renew has added contain the art centre’s auxiliary and circulation spaces, ensuring that significant internal changes were not required to the granaries.
A view of TaoCang Art Center from the adjacent lotus-flower pond
“Acting as the accompanying space for an art museum, the corridors allow for extending exhibition space externally in a way to protect the internal,” the studio explained.
“Through all these architectural efforts, we are paying our tribute and respect to the history of the old granaries.”
Roarc Renew lined the brick corridors with arches
The granaries were chosen as TaoCang Art Center’s main exhibition spaces because they have large, open interiors, achieved with arched, concrete roof structures built by local Chinese craftsmen.
These concrete arches have been left exposed inside and painted white to form a backdrop to the artwork.
The other only changes that Roarc Renew made to the granaries is the addition of large revolving semi-circular doors at either end and paintings of lotus flowers on the floors. These murals pay homage to the village’s lotus-flower industry and pond adjacent to the site.
An entrance area is positioned where the corridors meet
TaoCang Art Center’s corridors are lined with curved brick arches and run in parallel to the old granaries, before winding into the gap between them and curving up towards the sky.
This design was developed by Roarc Renew to create a dramatic “monument-like” structure that also complemented and echoed the design of the granaries.
A wheat motif nods to the history of the granaries
At the point where the corridors meet and sweep upwards, the walls are adorned with a giant image of two wheat ears, made from a pattern of projecting bricks.
This motif was included as a reference to the building’s past and also marks the main entrance point for visitors to TaoCang Art Centre.
One of the granaries that are used as an exhibition space
In the future, the TaoCang Art Center’s corridors will be developed to contain more facilities such as restaurants, coffee shops and souvenir shops to support the operation of the facility.
According to Roarc Renew, this will be achieved by inserting full-height glass into the openings of the corridors to transform them into indoor spaces.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
