- Year: 2008
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Photographs:Courtesy of Approach Architecture Studio
Text description provided by the architects. Iberia Center for Contemporary Art is a re-development project located in the 798 art district, Beijing. The original site was composed by a group of industrial buildings, The biggest one is around 1000 square meters area with 8 to 11 meters ceiling height.
The concept of the re-development is to convert these separated buildings into an integrated art exhibition space while keeping the industrial appearance as much as possible. A 50-meter-long brick wall was introduced to the street interface in order to join the 3 old individual buildings into one single continuing façade. The new façade, however, is not completely replacing the old façades, rather, interacting with the old one by its shape and tectonic concept.
The interior wall was preserved while a few new function boxes were inserted into the lofty space. Besides the exhibition space, it has offices, library, auditorium, café, art shop, etc.