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Architects: B.l.U.E. Architecture Studio: B.L.U.E. Architecture Design Studio
- Area: 243 m²
- Year: 2017
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Photographs:Eiichi Kano
Text description provided by the architects. OTA FINE ARTS gallery is located in Shanghai West Bund Culture & Art Pilot Zone, it is the first time settled in China, which is also the third gallery following the gallery of Tokyo and Singapore. 2017 is the 23rd year since the OTA FINE ARTS was founded. As the founder, Hidenori Ota is the most important promoter of Japan's contemporary national treasure artist Kusama Yayoi. He hopes to continue to provide the platform to more Asian cutting-edge artists and expands the new direction of the Asian contemporary art.
The base was a three-bay old bungalow. We chose to dismantle it and hope to build a brand-new and pure building which be full of new design language.
We imagine the six main functional areas required by the gallery as six unit boxes，due to considering the rectangular shape of the site and the require by the owner to maximize the use of the area. We use the rectangular box form to display and the most basic unit to maximize the space，Through a lot of block study, we have reached a balance of architectural form and function. Finally, there are four pure big blocks made up of six unit boxes.
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For material of the building, we want to use the traditional elements of Shanghai to show it. From gray brick of Shanghai traditional Shikumen to the red brick of old villa in colonial period of France, the brick seems to be the typical symbol in Shanghai building. We chose the brick as texture, but we abstract its color into white. This not only shows the characteristics of the city of Shanghai, but also syncretize with the many white buildings in the modern art area of the West Bund.
The main entrance to the building is located on the western side, there is no window in the western side, in this way, the wall of the exhibition space is more effectively used, the western wall of the building combines with two buildings around the building to make a courtyard space, which makes the main entrance space more sense of aggregation.The eastern side of the building faces the office entrance of the West Bund staff and it is also the main facade of the gallery. We use different sized windows to create a dialogue between the interior of the building and the outdoor space.
