Lieu Painting Studio
Lieu Painting Studio is located in Xi'an's High-Tech District. Clients want to create an artistic venue within the urbanised fabric, to meet flexible functional requests of teaching, experiencing, communicating and exhibiting, etc.
The studio is in the northwest corner of a high-rise office building, which provides a long period of steady north-facing light and beautiful sunset. The traditional framed core structure allows the space to be edged with massive columns, creating tension with the low space beneath the original ceiling of the aluminous gusset plate. We sought to remain and emphasise this sense of force by extracting the spatial language into three components: the column, the ceiling and the floor. We wrapped and deformed the existing columns and placed the storage function within the new non-structural columns.
Responding to a variety of functional requests, we introduce the shape of a circle in the main space. Circle’s characteristic of centripetal and centrifugal naturally works to gather and disperse people. Visitors can surround the artist, listen, discuss and share, or randomly choose a corner to focus on the object or model and immerse themselves in their creations. The two looping tracks for hanging paintings and curtains offer the possibility of flexible use in multiple scenarios.
The ancillary areas form a long space that leads the customers in. By the continued language of a circle in the ceiling, the space is visually extended through the mirrors on the shelves. The fixed cabinets divide the more private areas, such as the front desk and the work table, and the openings in the cabinets keep communication with the painting area.
