Yu Qingcheng Art Gallery: A Manifold Design by TJU Architect

Yu Qingcheng Gallery is located in Jixian, Tianjin. It has an 1800 square meters building area and was designed by Zhang Hua and his team from Tianjin University.

Yu Qingcheng is a world-famous clay sculpture artist who earned a reputation for his unique design style. The design concept of Yu Qingcheng Gallery can be described by the emotional phrase "hold mud" or a more rational word “manifold”. As a new design concept proposed by Zhang Hua, “manifold” is a form that is full of movements from end to end and has two or more different forms of expression. The form shows a process rather than a result. It is a constantly changing spatial form, a process from static to dynamic, and a process of evolution in time and space. It is a growing process of a form, a building with no focus, a geometric structure containing linear to nonlinear changes with both topological and fractal features.

People are accustomed to the view that a building is either square or round. The form, however neither square nor round, breaks the inertial thinking. It does not conform to common sense but accords with logic. The curves and lines no longer appear in the contrast, mechanical, rigid European-style geometric form, but makes nonlinear changes under a series of topological transformation from homeomorphism, homotopy to non-homeomorphism.

The gallery has won several prizes for its design including the silver award in German Design Award 2018, Excellence Award in IF Product Design Award 2017, two bronze prizes both in 9th WIADC and HKIA Cross-Strait Architectural Design Symposium and Awards 2017, etc.

By Li Mingyu

Editors: Eva Yin & Doris Harrington