Beijing / Jun 25, 2019
We’re excited to be part this year’s Architizer A+Awards with our project Guardian Art Center. Popular Choice Award voting is now open and will close on July 5th, 2019.
© Iwan Baan
Built on the doorstep of Beijing’s historic Forbidden City, the Guardian Art Center is a new hybrid typology for a cultural institution that transcends the traditional definitions of a contemporary art space. The world’s first custom-built auction house, it offers museum quality galleries, auction halls and state of the art conservation facilities, but also represents a community resource and integrated lifestyle concept with restaurants, cafes, a 120-room boutique hotel, flexible event and exhibition spaces, a bookshop and public transport infrastructure.
The design carefully inscribes the building into its surrounding context, in a sensitive architectural interpretation that fuses history and tradition with a contemporary vision for the future of a cultural art space. The ‘pixelated’ volumes of the lower portion of the building subtly refer to the adjacent historic urban fabric, echoing the grain, color and intricate scale of Beijing’s hutongs, while the upper portion of the building responds to the larger scale of the surrounding contemporary city.
The Architizer A+Awards is the largest awards program focused on promoting and celebrating the year’s best architecture and products.