Excerpt: In the Miro Store of Duoyun Bookstore, Wutopia Lab has designed the lighthouse as a library-like book tower. At the center of the tower is a red spiral staircase that connects the two stories of the white book tower. Stepping out of the white Skylight Book Tower is an abstract black forest. A sparse arrangement of black metal rods supports the partially hollowed-out dark metal roof.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] During the site surveys, I persuaded the client to include the octagonal tower, which was not originally included in the design. By the time I had followed the idea of the ark, the symbolism of this tower stood out. It is the lighthouse that stands in the harbor. I designed the lighthouse as a library-like book tower. When I was a child I always thought that behind the bookshelves there was a world like Narnia. At the center of the tower is a red spiral staircase that connects the two stories of the white book tower. As readers slowly walk up to the first floor and look up to the center of the sloping roof, they will notice the sun squeezing into the roof. Everything in the room starts with the sun.
Stepping out of the white Skylight Book Tower is an abstract black forest. A sparse arrangement of black metal rods supports the partially hollowed-out dark metal roof. When the sun shines directly, the light weaves through the green gaps and the black ground emerges in shimmering patches of light, as if in a forest. This is the semi-outdoor forest corridor that leads to the main space of Duoyun Bookstore. At the end of the corridor is a cloud gate, a symbol identified at the Huangshan store of Duoyun Bookstore. Looking in through the Cloud Gate, a new world is beckoning. Meanwhile, visitors will also catch the vision of the moon in the cloud gate, and looking back down the path, a curved moon in the forest is smiling. It corresponds to the very sun at the top of the Skylight Book Tower.
Behind the Cloud, Gate is the cloud-themed family-friendly area, the Cloud Terrace Cafe. We wrapped a layered, interlocking floating platform with a transition from white gradient perforated aluminum panels to brushed stainless steel on the entire surface. The reader feels as if they are walking through the clouds and resting among them. Here I insisted on using silver and white to create a quiet and private atmosphere. This is because I want to give the reader a moment of peace. So that when they pass through another cloud door, they can be warmly and astonishingly enveloped by the climax of the Miro store of Duoyun Bookstore, a magnificent and dramatic drawing library, a colorful ocean filled with everything.
The main part of the Miro store of Duoyun Bookstore is the drawing library on the first floor. Since I am particularly fascinated by the idea of separating contiguous rooms within each other to form a type of house within a house under a completely large space, I divided the picture books into four groups according to theme into different individual huts. Inspired by the Miro’s IP The Creation, I used different levels of blue to turn the whole drawing library into an ocean. Four of the animals from The Creation, sea creatures, amphibians, birds, and mammals, were selected and abstracted to form the animal-shaped entrances of the huts. The different holes combined with the different coloured perforated aluminum panels form the different facades of the huts, while the inside of the huts is uniformly white. After all, no matter how noisy it is, reading needs to remain quiet. The whole drawing library is a tribute and a spatial interpretation of the Creation.
There is a striking red perforated aluminum panel tent on the terrace outside the drawing library. Visitors can notice the flaming tent as they enter from the town square. The tent comes from two sources, The Circus of the Miro’s IP and the red flying house on the roof of the Anaya children’s restaurant designed by Wutopia lab five years ago. The carousel in the tent is the recurring symbol of Wutopia lab’s designs about children and dreams, representing a kind of adult childlike spirit that Wutopia lab insists on preserving. The red tent stands quietly on the fluorite floor. When night comes, the fluorite, which absorbs daylight, shines like a starry sky. We call this the Star Garden. The tent on the stars is a child’s declaration, “I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.”
I created rolling ‘mountains’ with gold perforated aluminum panels on the roof of the drawing library, and a glass house with a wave-tossed ceiling hidden inside the gold mountain. This multi-purpose hall, named the Aozora Lecture Hall, can be used for exhibitions, roadshows, book signings, dinners, and parties. However, what I actually want is someone to contemplate unattached in a plain box inside the brilliant gold, and this moment is my Eden.
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