Xinyang, China
Li Baofeng and her design team at HUSK have completed a new museum and geopark for the Xixian People’s Government of Henan Province that reclaims the ruins of former kilns in a lime mining pit on Pugong Mountain in Xinyang, Henan Province.
According to legend, during the Tang Dynasty, Pupu Taoist people lived in seclusion on this mountain where they collected medicines and made alchemy and hung pots to save the world.
Their virtues were admired by all people, so they were called Pugong Mountain.
Documents record that in the past, the ancient trees and vines and pine wings of Pushan were empty; and when looking at the vast expanse of the sky in the distance, there were purple hazes in the mist.
Pugong Mountain is a limestone mountain.
In recent decades, China’s rapid urbanization has brought huge business opportunities to Pugong Mountain.
In order to burn lime, hundreds of small lime kilns were built locally.
The once lush Pugong Mountain had become a hideous “Langya Mountain.”
However, this kind of development at the cost of damaging the environment is unsustainable.
After the country’s strict environmental protection policy was introduced, the lime kiln was completely shut down and it became an abandoned lime mine site.
In order to promote the concept of sustainable development, the People’s Government of Xixian County made plans to build a new museum with the theme of lime kilns.
After comparing multiple plans, the plan for a new museum and geopark was finally selected.
The architects integrated the new museum within the existing lime kilns and used the continuous old kiln group as the landmark gate for the geopark.
The roof of the kiln was transformed into a viewing platform and the ash outlet of one of the old kilns was set as the main galleries of the new museum.
At the entrance, a preserved old brick ladder for feeding materials is “inserted” into the museum, making the incomplete mine pit, the dilapidated gypsum kiln, and the brand-new museum form an organic whole.
In order to highlight the old lime kiln, Baofeng and her team deliberately weakened the shape and color of the museum, “hiding” it behind the old lime kiln, and “pressed” part of the exhibition space into the ground, making the height of the museum lower than the old lime kiln.
The architects used the limestone that has not been calcined after production was discontinued as a landscape element and set up viewing windows and viewing platforms in the corresponding positions of the museum building so that the old lime kiln in the sun and the incomplete mountain not far away become a large landscape that can be viewed through the window.
The scale of the real exhibits and this series of design techniques also make the museum building tightly anchored in this special place.
Project: Pugong Mountain Geology (Lime Mine) Museum
Architects: The Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST)
Lead Architect: Li Baofeng
Design Team: Qingqing Yi, Jialiang Pan, Wen Guo, Yang Yang, Ziling Wang, and Shuangning Wei
Design Partners: Haizhong Chen, Tianyu Wang, Tong Wang, Wen Guo, Anfu Shen, Ling Jin, Huapeng Wang, Lei Huang, Yu Wang, Rong Wang, Jiangbo Yao, and Shichang Ji
Client: Xixian People’s Government of Henan Province
Photographers: Yilong Zhao
