Among the Clouds Art Center / Yuan Architects
Text description provided by the architects. Located next to the Nanjing Tiebei City Park, the building serves as an art center. Its design attempts to subvert the impression of rigidity commonly associated with buildings with a vibrant organic form reminiscent of a sea of clouds, reflecting a natural harmony.
The building is composed of two basic elements: a staggered and stacked volume of two semi-reflective and translucent glass boxes on the inner side that simultaneously meet functional requirements and represent the building’s static rationality; five horizontal and transparent metal shutter sheets on the outer side that appear like a “flowing sea of clouds,” freely moving apart from the glass volume, providing shade from the sun, and symbolizing the dynamic sensibility of the building.
The relationship between the two basic elements is like the codependence between clothing and bodies, creating a richly expressive intermediary space between the intermittent flickers of light reflecting off of the glass cube and the thin metal shutters. The effect is a beguilingly poetic spatial aesthetic that lends to the interior area a multi-layered sense of outward extension and softly natural interactions. Shifting with the changing light, the superimposed facade appears solid yet yielding, aloof yet elegant, and logical yet emotional.
The impression of a building is no longer a clear silhouette.
Instead, it is an image of time mapped out across layers upon layers.
It is an expression of floating light and shadow.
It is a fluid exchange between illusion and reality.
Like a cloud drifting across a water surface
It is both architecture and landscape
It is elegant as well as silent
Finding sensations of life amidst complete purity and sensing the existence of time within ambiguity
