Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark

Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark | Odile Decq | Pidgeon Digital 07/05/20, 15:17
HOME ABOUT EXPLORE SUBSCRIBE FAQ CONTACT
Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark

Odile Decq (Studio Odile Decq)
1
ODILE DECQ
©Franck Juery
https://www-pidgeondigital-com.proxy-auth3.iuav.it/talks/fangshan-tangshan-national-geopark/chapters/ Pagina 1 di 17
For doing this Fangshan Tangshan museum, I got an email from a friend and a
Chinese architect living in Beijing who was from Nanjing, and he introduced me
this competition, and asked me if I would like to do this competition together
with him, and I agreed to do that. After that we started to work together. I
worked and I sent him the documents, but I went there on this site for the first
time before starting the project.
FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

MUSEUM, NANJING, CHINA BY ODILE DECQ,
2015. AERIAL VIEW
©Jinri & Zhu Jie
It's always important for me to go on site, and to understand what are the
conditions, what is the context, and to feel if the client has something to say.
And it is not so easy, especially with Chinese, especially when you are
surrounded by people only speaking Chinese, and not any English or French.
So only my friend architect was speaking, translating to me in English. So I
came to the site, and the site is one hour drive from Nanjing, and it's a natural,
it was a natural site at this time, it was a kind of mountain. Tangshan was a little
city, a little new development of a city, on the other side of the mountain. And
we went on the site, and the site is very particular, because this is a place where
in a cave they discovered the bones of two humans, of two pre-humans, from
the Neolithic, the first homo erectus; that has been designed as the first homo
erectus.

2015. EXTERIOR
©Roland Halbe
So my first visit was to go into the cave, into kind of a grotte, it was really
particular, going inside the mountain. And to be inside this cave where, they
show me where they discovered the skulls, and it was at the same time very
moving because you understand at the same moment that you are walking on
the same place where this homo erectus was walking a very, very long time ago.
It's a place where they have organised a kind of a visit, with some images, with
some people in plaster, and there are a lot of lighting, multicoloured lighting, so
it is very bizarre. But I was thinking that I'm walking on the path of this homo
erectus, and it was very moving.

2015. EXTERIOR
©Roland Halbe
After that I went to all this very, very big site on the mountain, and to a quarry
which is on the top, and they said "OK, we have the idea, the intention, to look
at the wisdom of this place. But if you want you can move, and you can do
discussions, you can choose a place where you want to locate the museum".
And because of the, of this idea of the homo erectus into the mountain, into the
cave, I was immediately thinking that I want to look at the museum close to the
mountain, coming from the mountain. So on a place where there were enough
surfaces to be able to build this long museum, and to organise it, as it is coming,
or to design it, as if it coming from the mountain. And this is why is the first
step, when I went back to France, and we started to work on it, was to design
the model of the site, with the curve line, and to do it by drawings and by
model; and to modify and to try to play with the curve line of the site. To extract
from the mountains the curve line of the site, and play with this curve line to
establish underneath and between the museum. And it's how it has been
sorted from the very beginning, this is a conceptual object.

2015. EXTERIOR
©Roland Halbe
We came to very little model with paper like that, and at the end I said "OK, this
model is nice as a design, it's perfect, perfect. It is nice, I like it", and we decided
to start like that. And we were three architects; there were another, a Chinese
one, and a Dutch one. And I don't remember who they were, I have no idea,
because I never met them. And I met the client, and I visited Nanjing; I knew
already Nanjing that I visit more Nanjing at this time, because I'm with my
architect friend, we did a long tour to many, many places in Nanjing, and in
Tangshan. And Tangshan is not very developed at this time, now it is much more
developed; and this is how the project started. At the end, for the application
for the submission project, we had to send a document, and we had an
interview. So I had to go back again, all of us - our three - we were there. Again I
did not meet them, it was not on the same day. And I had to present the project,
the submission, and one week later they told me we are on.

2015. MASTER PLAN

©Studio Odile Decq
So the challenge of this project was, mostly, the size, to insert this size on the
place. Because it was, it's not easy. You can, if I was thinking as an architectural
object, I will never have done this project like that. Because an architectural
object is always something more square, or a big object, a big object that you
put on a site, or you establish on a site; and I didn't want to do an object, I
wanted to extract the project from the mountain - this is different. So it's a kind
of remodelling the landscape and the architecture together.

2015. GROUND FLOOR PLAN

©Studio Odile Decq
The other challenge was that the program, the brief, was not very precise. They
knew that they wanted to establish a museum. At the same time they talk to us
about this very old human from the homo erectus, but at the same time also
the specific stones that they have in Nanjing. They come from a kind of a fairy
tale, they say that this is not a fairy tale, but I believe it is a fairy tale: that once, I
don't remember when, but a very long time ago, the sky opened and a rain of
this stone come down on Nanjing, on this site. And these stones are
particularly colourful, they are very particular, so it was interesting; at the same
time the positioning of the stones, and it was, they are multi-colourful. Some
red, some blue, very bizarre. Maybe it's a fairy tale, maybe it's a true story, I
don't know: what is that? And so this is really geological, this is really historical,
archaeological etc. Here it had very strong roots, very strong roots, and at the
same time very strong story. To bring that to the contemporary way, we
proposed to organise a museum with different floors, because it's twenty
thousand square metres, so it's a big museum. We had different sections, and
they gave us some sections, but not very clear about if they will be the last one,
or maybe not.

2015. SECTION
©Studio Odile Decq
So I decided that as in many, most of my museums, maybe all of my museums, I

always think that going into the museum you travel the space; you travel with
the building, you travel because you decide when you are a visitor. Or if you are
a group alone, you decide where to go. You can decide this is not, the museum
is not directing you, you can have a guide, so the guide is giving you the tour;
but if you are alone you could be able to decide where to go. And for me it's
coming from a kind of history, a personal history that I did about the museum. If
you think about the museums, from the, until the nineteenth century,
beginning of the twentieth century, they were mostly established in big
buildings, where you have a long, big lobby. A hall, a big lobby, and after that
you have rooms that you, if you think about The Louvre for example, which has
been established in a palace, but most of the museums, national museums, in
many, many countries have been established in palaces. And you go from one
room to another room, to another room, to another room. So you pass through
the historical way into it to understand the museum. And there is no choice,
because you have to pass from one room to another room. And I always say
that Frank Lloyd Wright, when he did the Guggenheim in New York, created a
kind of a difference, because there is; if you go to Guggenheim in Bilbao, in
New York, you have the ramp. And the ramp makes you experiment with space.
And at the same time, because the rooms are on these ramps, at different
levels, you can choose in which room you want to go. But, if you go into the
room, you do discover that on some places you can travel from room to room.
So he proposed something which is a kind of a choice - there are two
possibilities. And from the middle of the nineties, when we were discussing
about, when we were discussing during some application for museums, we
were always discussing that we have give choices for people. And these two
choices were very important for us. This is why, in such a building which is very
long and not so easy to make a travel into it, and because the sections they
wanted to establish were very large, I decided to create a vertical promenade.
And the vertical promenade would have been through the atrium. But the
atrium, if you have an atrium, is not, OK a vertical promenade is a lift or an
escalator, that is not interesting. So to me, to make it interesting, I decided to
switch this atrium from the floors to floors, so it's not exactly at the same place.
It's, there is a vertical void; but the shape of it is not at the same place around
this vertical void. So that means that you, when you go from floor to floor, and
you are arriving to the floor not at the same place, even if the space is the same
on both side. It's any difference also of the position of the escalators inside. So
because I knew that it was for many, many people, it would have been for many
people; it's easier to work with escalators than with the lift. So I established
escalators through the void, but not at the same place to make people turning
around the atrium at every level, at different places, to have the possibility of a
view of what happens on both sides, and to create an experience of the space
by going up.
9
2015. INTERIOR
©Roland Halbe
The question of the architecture is guiding the visitors, is not totally the fact of
this museum, because they have lifts also. So they can decide, and the curator
could decide, how this is done. But at the same time, and when I did the
competition there were no directors, no curator, nobody. So I could have that
as I thought - this is a particular proposition when you are doing a museum in
China, because as I said a bit earlier there is no preset ideas of the context and
the content of the museum.
10

2015. INTERIOR
©Roland Halbe
So at the beginning for the competition it was with this curve line, which are
repeating in front of, at every level, in front of the museum, with big balconies,
big terraces, in front at every level, which are all along the facade. And turning
and curving as the museum is curving. But at the same time it was with a clear
facade. And the client, as soon as we win, told me we prefer that you create a
stone facade because we are in the month end, we are close to the quarry. So I
decided to create a kind of a screen, at the end of these long balconies, along
the extremity of the facade of the balconies. And with, to have more lines on
the building; and so at the end the building is a kind of representation of the
curve lines of the site, all at every level, at every fifty centimetres or one metre.
And it turns, and is twisted, and the composition of it is done with stone, but
not real stone. It's concrete stone, moulded concrete stone, that we designed
one by one. So it's more than one thousand kind of moulds that we had to do
for that. And it was a long work to design this piece, these pieces. So at the end
it seems as stone built building, but behind the stone you find the glass, and
after that you have the spaces.
11

2015. FAÇADE
©Roland Halbe
When you build in China, you have to care about how it will be built at the end.
So from caring about how it will be built you have to detail a lot, to detail a lot
the project. That it has to be nearly finished as an executive drawing at the
drawing process, even if you don't have this mission. Otherwise it's
transforming, it is built differently from what you are drawing. And this idea of
developing and working more, came to me when I had discussion with Peter
Rice in the nineties. Peter Rice, a very important engineer in the nineties, and
Peter was, when we work on a project with him, he told me a story about the
Osaka Airport won by Renzo Piano in Japan. When he won, he was invited to
come in Japan for a ceremony, and they wanted to give him a cheque book
note, with the big money, and say goodbye we will see you for the opening. And
Renzo, Renzo was very frustrated, and Peter Rice told me, so he said can we
have a meeting, because I would like to be involved in the construction and in
the development of the project, and they said no, it is not your job, but we can
have a meeting. So during the meeting he asks them if they knew how to build;
and how to build the facade especially, and the cover, because they were asking
a lot of questions about that: how to develop that, how to etc. etc. So he
negotiated with them, I will take care about the facade and the cover, and you
will do everything else. So he negotiated because of the complexity of the
situation. So, thanks to that it was always in my mind, so when you work
somewhere very far, where you are not sure about the condition of the
construction of the development of your drawing by others, you have to make
some places, or some particularity of your architecture a bit complex in
techniques that you know, to be able to assist them, and to answer your, to be
involved in that process. And I did that already in China for another building in
Shanghai, so I continue to do, I continue to do that for this museum. So I knew
that with these stones they needed us, and especially for the development of
the curve.
12

2015. FAÇADE
©Roland Halbe
In China, they can, they give you contracts, but a short contract in the process.
And because it's a short contract, it's not very well paid. So it's hard, first you
have to discuss that, and you have to discuss that hardly, to be sure that you
have paid enough to be, to develop what you want. And, but OK you still need
to do that, and at the end I say OK because I still have to negotiate with them, I
have to give them the maximum that I am sure that the building at the end is
built as I wanted. And finally, they were sending me, during the process of the
construction many, many pictures. I had some internet discussion with them,
and at the end it was built as I designed it. When I started to work there, it was
the beginning of 2000s, that means ten years, the beginning of the boom in
China, they started the consultation process, they were were some conditions
which were not very easy because they were not treating very well the
architects. Architects are just people who are doing a drawing and you built it.
Because they needed to build a lot. And because at this time they were building
a lot, by quantity, not by quality. It was complicated to negotiate and to discuss
with them, because to make them understand the need of quality. But now
there is no problem any more, they have many architects, very good architects,
and they don't need us anymore. This is a problem! There is a problem!
13

2015. INTERIOR
©Roland Halbe
Last time that I was in, I saw pictures of it, they were not so many objects
inside. So this is a problem in China today with museums, because the
government decided that in China, because they discovered that culture is
attracting for tourism, and for people, so every city wants to build museums
everywhere, and many museums. And the government decided that they will
build more museums than there were museums in the earth. OK, this is OK,
this is the economic effect of the country, but at the end, so there are, I don't
think there still are, but there were a lot, a lot of competitions for museums.
But for museums without content, without anything. So in a way, for my
museum was particular because of this man of Nanjing, but at the same time it
was and chose... another condition was that it was built very fast. In three
years, between the competition and the end of the construction, because they
wanted to open it in 2015 for the young, the young Olympic Games in Nanjing
in 2015 during the summer. So the building was not totally finished at this time,
but they opened for having a ceremony into the lobby and in some rooms etc.
And after that, the new government came in China, and the new government
did a big cleaning system with the politicians, and the mayor of Nanjing was
trapped and go to jail. So I never had any ceremony for the opening of the
building [laughs]. So this is very bizarre, and I heard sometimes that now some
people have been there, and it's not very full, it's not really... it's quite empty,
still quite empty. And there are many, many museums empty in China.
14

2015. AERIAL VIEW
©Jinri & Zhu Jie
For me architecture is an adventure, and every project is a new adventure. And

when I started to work with sites like that, when I worked for another museum
in Austria, in 2003 and I won this competition, but is has never been built.
Because it was a fantastic site again, and I wanted to try to play with the
landscape, and to insert again, to insert the museum into the landscape, and
not adding an object on a site where there's full nature. And I started that, and
it has been exhibited in 2004 in the Venice Biennale. And I discovered after
that many, many people have done a work with that, and is playing with the
landscape etc. But I did that for this first proposal in 2003, and when I was
facing this competition in 2011 (or something like that), I was thinking that
maybe I will start back to do that. And for me I play with the landscape in a
particular way, and if I have a philosophy, or a theory, I say this is 'landscape
bondage' [laughs] because that means that you play with with the lines of the
landscape; you express them, or you compress them. And you know when you
have 'bondage', this is this kind of dressing for women, where you have, you
compress the size of the body in the middle, and because the flesh of the body
is compressed, above and down it expands, and it's really sensual. So this is
what I wanted to express with the landscape with my lines. And I did that also
another time for another competition that I won and not built, so I was playing
a lot with that idea of making 'bondage' with landscape. Because I am
naturalist, always very soft, and I want... no, it is not always very soft, there are
some places of landscape not soft, but when we are working on a landscape, I
want it always to express that because it becomes architecture, it becomes
more solid, more different, I wanted to to play with this idea of compressing
and expanding the flesh of the landscape.
Related talks:
Odile Decq Dominique Perrault Julia Barfield Pascal Flammer

The Confluence Institute: Ewha Womans University: Rethinking The Classroom: House In Balsthall: From Syste
Rethinking Architectural Building As Landscape University Of Cambridge Primary To Composition
Education 2017 School 2018
2017 2017
Site design & build by Spork Digital Ltd • © World Microfilms Publications Limited 2018 • Get in touch

Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark - Odile Decq - Pidgeon Digital

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark - Odile Decq - Pidgeon Digital

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark - Odile Decq - Pidgeon Digital

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark | Odile Decq | Pidgeon Digital 07/05/20, 15:17

HOME ABOUT EXPLORE SUBSCRIBE FAQ CONTACT

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

2015. MASTER PLAN

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

2015. GROUND FLOOR PLAN

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

So I decided that as in many, most of my museums, maybe all of my museums, I

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

FANGSHAN TANGSHAN NATIONAL GEOPARK

For me architecture is an adventure, and every project is a new adventure. And

Odile Decq Dominique Perrault Julia Barfield Pascal Flammer

You might also like