Text description provided by the architects. Future Bookstore is located in Guli, Changshu, Jiangsu Province. Study of architecture is the key to open the conversation about future under the historical circumstances. The client, Future Bookstore had a vision that this newly built bookstore can uphold some non-traditional function within such traditional context, exhibit books at regular periods.
The bookstore hides in a resident area of a water town. Its neighbor is the Tieqintongjian Pagoda with history over 200 years, one of the private book collection house of Qing Dynasty. Such special context mixed up those blurry memory of spatial experience, the south of the city, old houses, childhood in Qingzhuangyuan Lane.
These memories became important analogy in the design process. We didn’t attempt to create a whole brand new possibility. Imagination was triggered by the memories and experience.
Under the old roof structure, there hides another new roof. They share similar logic of form, the ridge, the inner and outer cornice and clear volume of two slopes. Besides the comparability, it seemed to be completely unacquainted. Leaving the obvious outline of geometrical rules behind, the new roof composed a flow of curve together with the river outside. The eave is going up and down, some are like a welcoming gesture, while some are like a protection screen.
