Ar. Yang Liu, who works at DL Atelier in Beijing, China, compares his design for adaptive reuse to the painting of Vincent van Gogh, an impressionist painter whose work has become a symbol of individual expression… I have had the opportunity to see Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Starry Night on two distinct times over the course of the previous several years. Maybe I wasn’t in the appropriate frame of mind at the moment, but I wasn’t very moved by what I saw. At the same time that I was working on a remodeling project the previous year, I went back and reexamined my perception of those paintings, and I came to some fresh realizations. The location of the project is tucked away in a secluded region in the central business district of Beijing. During the 1980s, we were tasked with renovating a tall, three-story light industrial manufacturing building that had a span of between four and six meters. The facade system of the whole industrial complex had been developed by Kengo Kuma, and we were not given a lot of leeway to express ourselves on the outside of the building. However, the customer decided that it would become the home of an educational organization halfway through the construction process, and before long, the project brief shifted from a kindergarten to a shared working space. Initially, the building was intended to serve as a yoga school. At the very end, it became more difficult to understand the purpose of the endeavor. In a period of time that was both gradual and abrupt, the changes began to take shape. In the end, the fight was not so much about the technical issues as it was about the psychological tension and anxiety, which was eventually reflected in the design. The fact that the project was transformed into a spatial journal was one of the aspects of the process that I found most enjoyable. It served as a tranquil haven for me during times of uncertainty and tracked the journey of my design thinking. The design had to progressively sacrifice the overall idea in order to concentrate on the creation of solitary areas instead of the overall project. This was necessary since the spatial arrangement and construction progress were constantly changing. We made an effort to construct each area as a hallway-like place that was not devoted to any one purpose since there was no content. I believe that it is exactly this sort of place that has the potential to activate our senses in ways that we would not anticipate. When we think about a setting that is functionally particular, such as a classroom, for example, our senses are often dominated with preconceived conceptions of what an educational experience should be like. A room that is considered to be “useless” on the other hand inspires us to be inquisitive and sensitive, both on the outside and the inside. We were given a number of ‘useless’ places to work with, and depending on the lighting conditions, we assigned two quite contradictory spatial atmospheres: one was fiery and passionate, while the other was serene and distant. It seemed as if the binary was expressed in order to provide an air of theatricality to the situation. More crucially, we intended that individuals within the building would be able to experience the co-existence of these two atmospheres whenever and wherever they were present. This was accomplished via the spatial juxtaposition and antagonism. There was a striking resemblance between the result and the feelings depicted in Van Gogh’s paintings. Despite the fact that there are fights and upheaval going on, intoxicated delusions of the crazy of the world continue to exist. Was there any place where Van Gogh’s wandering mind might find peace and quiet, other from the solitary beauty of sunflowers and the boundless expanse of the night sky? I may never know, but yet I question myself: what occupied the thoughts of the sunflowers, when the night descended, and stars cascaded? Examine the pictures that may be seen on indiaartndesign.com. Related Articles – space, planning,
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