Zhongshu Bookstore: reading on a cloud

Shanghai-based Chinese architectural firm Wutopia Lab recently completed an all-white bookstore in Xi’an, one of China’s oldest cities, with great imagination and beautiful artistic expression, using 300 tonnes of steel and 30,000 meters of light strips.

Wutopia Lab studio, under the direction of architect Yu Ting, has succeeded in creating a boldly modern bookstore in the city of Xi’an, China. Over 1,886 m2, the team has set up a veritable reading paradise, which one would believe established on clouds, forming a free and light space of immaculate whiteness. Defying the materials traditionally used for bookcases, the designers adopted, for the first time, 5mm thick steel plates to personalize the curved shelves, which gave the impression of floating in the air. State-of-the-art technologies are applied for this: each piece of sheet steel is optimized by programming, processed by numerically controlled machine tools, then assembled on site according to numbering. The envisaged bias is that of fluid and curved lines, which do not know any sharp angle. The back panel is made of translucent acrylic, and a floor tile is replaced by a glass floor, in order to reproduce the illusion of the surface of the water. As for the area dedicated to children, it is made up of a crystal structure hidden in the forest and is inspired by trees and animal silhouettes, in a beautiful spirit of playful freedom.