ADARC Lecture Series
The Making of Architecture + Art Space about The Latern
Time: Janarary 24, 2022
Venue: The Lantern, Guangzhou
Speaker: Dr. Allan Ting
The Lantern Art Space is located in Shunde Fengjian Water Town, Guangdong Province, which has a reputation of a thousand-year-old water village culture and strong Lingnan (嶺南) heritage. The town is a famous rural tourist attraction in history. There are large number of ancient bridges, classic temples and old trees around the site. The Zen Buddhism culture is predominant; the village sentiment is simple and natural, with unique cultural products and the internationally renowned Shunde cuisine. As rural infrastructure and supporting facilities cannot keep up with the local quality of life and the growing demand for foreign tourism, surrounding problems have gradually emerged, such as lack of cultural and art exhibition and exchange venues, poor quality of accommodation and hospitality facilities, traffic congestion, catering quality needs to be improved, tourism service support needs to be upgraded. The essence of the project is a building transformation in the context of rural revitalization. The design needs to rejuvenate 2 vacant houses and a garden with a river, and implant contemporary culture and art spaces and high-quality hotel facilities into them.
The total renovation area of the project is 4,912 square meters, including the use of existing buildings to create a series of art gallery spaces displaying the works of more than 20 artists, 29 boutique hotel rooms, 3 special dining spaces, 1 outdoor garden with Lingnan characteristics, plus to retain and enhance existing ecological river landscape.
Our design vision is to create a new platform of culture and art space, with future outlook showing the unique characteristics of the Fenjian water town, and to establish a new landmark of promoting value of oriental aesthetics. In terms of design strategies, how to effectively utilize the surrounding human and tourism resources without being affected by its vulgar sense, meanwhile to create exclusive tranquil quality, and integrate the Lingnan culture into it, is a question worthy of careful studies. We hope to use the modern design language to inherit and innovate the classical Lingnan aesthetics, and give the old space a new mission through the application of some local craftsmanship.
The project adopts the whole process of integrated design, from planning, architecture, landscape, interior, lighting design, art exhibition design by the overall leadership of the architect, co-ordination and strict quality control.
The Lantern Art Spacehas an innate self-confidence and modesty, yet it contains energy, which explains the value of Lingnan culture deeply. The new design language is created with simple materials and exquisite workmanship, responding to the need for low carbon screen energy, ventilation and lighting, and reflecting the spirit of Lingnan culture which dares to transcend tradition and innovate. The design boldly uses the charm of local elements and wisdom to reactivate the site, building a quality of life rich in sentiment, as well as advocating a social spirit and humanistic value of openness, diversity and community friendly.
