Japanese architect Junya Ishigami has unveiled the one-kilometre-long Zaishui Art Museum on a lake in China, which features openings that let water flow over the museum floor. The Zaishui Art Museum was commissioned for a burgeoning development in Rizhao, Shandong Province, and takes up most of the length of the artificial lake, near the entrance of the development. The 20,000-square-metre building, housing an exhibition area, visitor center, and retail space, aims to reimagine the relationship between humans and nature.
The structure is supported by 300 columns positioned in the 2m-deep lake
‘I wanted to present the building as a new landscape, embedding it into the Chinese environment to create the experience of walking through the lake — similarly to walking on the beach, where people can feel the essence of water,’ Junya Ishigami tells designboom. Glass panelling was inserted between the columns to give visitors views of the lake, with Ishigami intentionally leaving gaps where the building’s floor meets the surface of the lake. This allows water to flow into the building, submerging parts of the floor. In winter, whilst the water surface will freeze, the water underneath remains liquid and will continue to flow into the interior.
Ishigami designed the long, linear main building so that it can integrate with the lake, creating a continuous horizon by drawing water inside the structure itself. The whole aims to bring ‘the outside in’. Its parametric design creates varying heights, widths and slopes ranging from 1.22m to 4.95m high, and 4.8m to 20m wide. ‘In some places, the soft curve of the roof hangs low, contiguous with the lake surface and mountain slopes behind,’ explains Ishigami, ‘and in others, it turns toward the sky, opening up generously and merging the interior of the building into the landscape outside.’
The columns, repeated at regular intervals, define the new lake surface, rising from the rear to hold up a gently undulating concrete roof
Photography by Arch-Exist
