Read in the Clouds at Wutopia Lab’s Ultramodern Xi’an Bookstore
Nearly 10,000 feet of undulating stark white steel bookcases allow a dazzling collection of books to shine at the new Zhongshu Bookstore. Located in Xi?an, China, a city best known for its subterranean collection of ancient life-sized Terracotta Warriors and Horses, the bookstore by Shanghai-based firm Wutopia Lab reaches into the future with spaceship-like aesthetics.
The architects realized their dream of creating a reading space that feels like it?s in the clouds, eliminating right angles and most straight lines other than those of the horizontal bookshelves set into the walls.
Full of bright-yet-diffused light designed to mimic natural daylight, the space is full of arched doorways, reading nooks, and floating displays that look like something straight out of Star Wars. Individual books the store wants to highlight hang down from the ceiling, illuminated by skylights and ribbons of fixtures overhead.
300 tons of steel and 30,000 meters of light strips went into the ultramodern bookstore, and to adhere to strict local fire codes, the architects used five-millimeter-thick steel plates to create the customized curved bookshelves. Precise structural calculations allowed them to create a steel frame hidden behind the foundation to support the structure.
The free-flowing nature of the space creates seemingly endless nooks and crannies, allowing the store to retain the cozy feel of a library, a place to discover and connect with books, despite i...
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