Blossom Pavilion

Blossom Pavilion is a cooperative spatial device with artist Zhan Wang, which is also one of the spatial art pieces project of Shanghai Urban Space Art Season 2015 1+1 (artist + architect).

Zhan Wang’s representive project is his rockery sculpture made by stainless steel. The most recent investigate, casted stainless steel, leave a deeply impression on me. Artist leaves a flat, thin and polished stainless steel piece on natural ground or other texture. Then carefully cast the texture on stainless steel by soft packaged hammer. In this way, an industrial material is left with nature information and artificial trace, which is also represented by the specific material behavior.

Supporting and coverage is human being’s most primitive spatial construction form, which could shelter oneself from suffering weather conditions. In the evolution of mankind construction, the principle is tending to be rational and scientific. Engineering gradually become the core of construction technique. The structure of Blossom Pavilion has been scrupulously calculated. The overall overage area is 12metres plus 8 metres, which consist of two types of thickness (8mm and 14mm) steel plates in the 800x800mm grid according to the allowable stress. The height of 14mm thickness cloud-shape ribs above the steel plate stay a range of 50-200mm, which shaped as a natural topographic slope. The chambers among the ribs were used as the pots for flowers on the roof of Blossom Pavilion. The steel plate is supported by 6 places’ single or A-shape solid steel columns, witch size at 60X60mm. A Mies style minimalism construction has been formed like this.

The most rational structure mechanics is not the principle when architect decide where to put the supporting point. A space divided by ‘sliced rockery’ is the main picture in mind. As the concept of artist treat stainless steel slice, the rockery spatial concept has been brought in into engineering supporting structures. Architect divided and translated artist’s stainless-steel-rockery sculpture into a space with rockery concept. Artist chose the hill stone cast texture steel as the façade of sliced side. The surrounding plants and trees has been engaged into the Blossom Pavilion with this method.

Because of the involved artist, architect engaged with primitive spatial rhetoric by a contemporary method.