BEIJING—Working in juxtaposed unison, both dark matte and light reflecting tiles traverse in reptilian fashion along the facade of this building, now home to China’s oldest auction house, China Guardian Auction.
Designed by Büro Ole Scheeren‘s architecture firm, Dezeen writes the Guardian Art Center features staggered cubic structures faced with diagonal grey concrete tile perforated with rounded light-reflecting, scale-like windows. Along the top portion is a slightly divergent superstructure featuring an articulated curtain of overlapping translucent glass tiles.
Photographer Yueqi Jazzy Li reveals the “pixelated” forms in his new images (featured here). He tells Dezeen:
“The diagram of an elegant glass volume floating above a series of stone-clad intersecting boxes reads quite nicely against its immediate context in Beijing, which includes a hodgepodge of functional modern, Chinese post-modern, and vernacular Hutong buildings.”
Th museum/auction house hybrid (unveiled in 2015) serves “for the display and exchange of art, carefully embedded within the small scaled historical fabric while resonating with the surrounding contemporary context.”
Conceived as the world’s first major museum and auction house hybrid, the arts centre provides two large auction halls, as well as a proposed 1,700-square-metre exhibition and event space, and a 120-room hotel.
The building is nestled merely two blocks from Beijing’s Forbidden City —the Chinese imperial palace that dates back to the Ming dynasty in the early 15th-century.
The contrast between the area’s historic legacy and the increasingly modern surrounding architecture was a main focal point in the development of the project.
Photographs by: Yueqi Jazzy Li
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