Chinese architecture studio MAD Architects, led by Ma Yansong, has completed this library, the Cloudscape of Haikou, on the coast of the island of Hainan, on the southern tip of China. A prominent port city on the southern tip of China, Haikou was once an important stop on the Maritime Silk Road. With the establishment of the Hainan International Tourism Island and Hainan Free Trade Zone, Haikou's influence has seen a gradual resurgence.

The 1,000-square-metre library is the first of sixteen pavilions being constructed in Century Park as part of a wider rejuvenation project of Haikou Bay.

Cloudscape of Haikou is distinguished by its organic, flowing form, in which the building's interior and exterior are cast as one vessel, without any right angles.
The white concrete exterior the Cloudscape of Haikou designed by MAD Architects is punctuated by large curved cut-outs that frame views of the sea, sky and land, allowing natural light and air to enter and allowing enjoy visitors in nature and the coastal landscape.

The Cloudscape of Haikou is the first of sixteen coastal pavilions commissioned by the Haikou Tourism and Culture Investment Holding Group to rejuvenate the historic port city, with the aim of improving public space along the coast, under the motto "Haikou, Pavilions by the sea."
 
MAD designed a project covering an area of 4,397 square meter, with a construction area of 1,380 square meter. On pavilion south side is a library and reading space capable of holding 10,000 books, as well as a multi-functional audio-visual area: free and open for public use. Meanwhile, the building’s northern area features a café, public restrooms, barrier-free restrooms, showers, a nursery room, a public rest area, and a roof garden.
 

Project description by MAD Architects

MAD joins this collection of pavilions with a building containing a bookstore and citizen amenities. Situated in Century Park on the shore of Haikou Bay, the project covers an area of 4,397 square meters, with a construction area of 1,380 square meters. To the south side of the pavilion are a library and reading space capable of holding 10,000 books, as well as a multi-functional audio-visual area: free and open for public use. Meanwhile, the building’s northern area features a café, public restrooms, barrier-free restrooms, showers, a nursery room, a public rest area, and a roof garden.

Beginning a new book is often a moment that readers cherish: a venture into the surreal or unknown and gentle removal from everyday reality. The visiting experience of the Cloudscape is similar. The architecture enables people to approach the building removed from our familiar urban reality, and begin a new journey transcending time and space. The complexity of the cave-shaped form deconstructs the space layer by layer, offering readers a weightless field to be inhabited by their imagination.

The building, quietly located between land and sea, is highly sculptural. The pavilion’s free and organic forms also allow for the creation of unique interior spaces, where walls, floors, and ceilings merge in unpredictable ways, and the boundaries between the indoors and outdoors are blurred.

The circular openings of the building are reminiscent of holes forged by wildlife or seas, blurring the boundary between architecture and nature. The varying sizes of the openings allow natural light into the interior and create a natural ventilation effect to cool the building in Haikou’s year-round warm climate. Through the holes, people observe the sky and sea, as if looking at a familiar world through the passage of time and space. This layering of atmospheres, and collision between people and space, creates a sense of living ritual.

The cascading reading area facing the sea, which connects the first and second floors, is not exclusively for reading, but also a venue for cultural exchange activities. The children's reading area is isolated from the main reading space, where skylights, holes, and niches stimulate the children's desire to explore.  

The structural form creates several semi-outdoor spaces and platforms, which also serve as excellent spaces for people to read and gaze at the sea. In response to the local hot climate, the gray space of the building's outer corridor is cantilevered to achieve comfortable temperatures, culminating in a sustainable, energy-saving structure.

Through their pavilion, MAD champions an "anti-material" approach, avoiding the intentional expression of structure and construction, thus dissolving the inherent everyday perception of the material and allowing the spatial feeling itself to become the main subject. Here, concrete is a liquid material, characterized by its flowing, soft, and variable structural form.

The interior and exterior of the building are cast in fair-faced concrete to create a single cohesive, flowing form. The roof and floor feature double-layered waffle slabs that support the building’s scale and large cantilever. The design development was conducted and tested using digital models. It was possible to hide all mechanical, electrical, and plumbing elements within the concrete cavity to minimize their appearance and create visual consistency. The smooth, organic aura of the pavilion is only made possible by this key integration of architecture, structure, and mechanical and electrical design.
 

"Spirituality is the core value of architecture. It contributes to the humanistic atmosphere of a city. We want this building to be an urban space that people would like to make part of their daily lives. Architecture, art, humanity, and nature meet here, opening up a journey of visitors’ imaginations to explore and appreciate the meaning that different beauties bring to their lives."

Ma Yansong

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Architects
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MAD Architects. Principal Partners.- Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, Yosuke Hayano. Associate In Charge.- Changrui Fu.
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Design Team
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Siyang Qiang, Li Shang, Feifei Sun, Dayie Wu, Alan Rodríguez Carrillo, Qilin Xie, Beatrice Bavuso.
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Collaborators
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Executive Architects.- East China Architectural Design and Research Institute.
Façade Consultant.- RFR Shanghai.
Lighting Consultants.- Beijing Ning Field Lighting Design Corp. Ltd.
Signage Design.- 2x4 Beijing.
Interior Design.- Beijing Ling & BuYao Interior design.
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Client
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Haikou Tourism & Culture Investment Holding Group.
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Contractors
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Yihuida Shimizu Concrete.
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Area
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1,380 m².
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Dates
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2021.
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MAD Office, Beijing, China. MAD is a Beijing-based architecture design office dedicated to creating innovative projects. The firm combines a sophisticated design philosophy with advanced technology in addressing and furthering issues in contemporary architecture and urbanity.

The firm has been the recipient of numerous awards including the 2006 Architectural League of New York's Young Architects Forum Award.

MAD's ongoing projects include the international competition-winning Absolute Tower in Toronto, Canada; The Tianjin Sinosteel International Plaza, a 320M tall tower in Tianjin, China; the Mongolian Museum in Inner Mongolia, China, and a private villa in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The firm has also won numerous international design competitions, including the 2006 Absolute Tower Competition in Toronto; the 2005 Solar Plaza Competition in Guangzhou, China, and the 2004 Shanghai National Software Outsourcing Base.

MAD's work has been published worldwide, and the office has also presented its designs in a series of exhibitions. In 2006, MAD was shown at the ‘MAD in China' exhibition in Venice during the Architecture Biennial, and the ‘MAD Under Construction' exhibition at the Tokyo Gallery in Beijing. In March of 2007, MAD will be shown at ‘MAD.exe' an exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Ma Yansong, Yosuke Hayano and Qun Dand.

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Beijing-born architect Ma Yansong is recognized as an important voice in a new generation of architects. Since the founding of MAD in 2004, his works in architecture and art have been widely published and exhibited. He graduated from the Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture. Ma attended Yale University after receiving the American Institute of Architects Scholarship for Advanced Architecture Research in 2001 and holds a masters degree in Architecture from Yale. He has since taught architecture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

Ma Yansong was awarded the 2006 Architecture League Young Architects Award. In 2008 he was selected as one of the twenty most influential Young Architects today by ICON magazine and Fast Company named him one of the ten most creative people in architecture in 2009. In 2010 he became the first architect from China to receive a RIBA fellowship.

“I work with emotion and with the context. When I design a building, I close my eyes and feel as if I saw a virtual world which lays half way between the city, the nature and the land. It goes from large scale to small scale. Many things travel in front of my eyes; I feel them and try to find the way to express my feelings. The language I use is the least important of it all. It does not matter whether they are straight lines, curves... I only intend for people to feel the same or to find something unexpected” says Ma Yansong. “MAD is an attitude, a posture towards architecture, towards society. Through our work we want people to be inspired by a place through local nature, time and space”, he states.

Photo © Daniel J.Allen

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Published on: August 20, 2021
Cite: "A continuous shell. The Cloudscape of Haikou by MAD Architects" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/a-continuous-shell-cloudscape-haikou-mad-architects> ISSN 1139-6415
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