Jinzhou Mosaic Park: A Modern Example of Cultural Hybridisation
Jinzhou is a city in the north-east of Beijing with a population of three million. The city's urban expansion has been characterised by a large public park built on a large area of 176 hectares reclaimed from the sea. The park initially hosted the 2013 Jinzhou World Landscape Art Fair and continued to serve as the central park of a new urban development after the fair. 20 international designers were commissioned to design 20 projects within similar circular boundaries in different parts of the park, linking their designs to their own cultural backgrounds and creating an identity. The design of the fair is based on the paradox that although globalisation is associated with the destruction of local cultural identity, it can also create a kind of identity.
Mosaic Park Project
The Mosaic Park project aims to give a broader meaning to the site by establishing a connection between citizens and the space. Designed by Casanova + Hernandez Architecture, the project is designed to experience the concept of cultural hybridisation, a phenomenon that has developed over the centuries through commercial and cultural exchanges between West and East. On the one hand, the park's paving and benches are made of broken pieces of local ceramics in different colours, and the facades of the museum are made with technical solutions such as the trecandís technique, a technique popularised in Europe by the Roman Empire and used by Catalan modernist architects.
Hybrid Character of Architecture and Landscape
The project is said to represent a contemporary urban park paradigm, which is neither a part of the natural landscape nor a landscaped part of the city. Mosaic Park has a hybrid character, combining architecture and landscape, nature and artificiality. The irregular geometry of the park emerges as a fractured three-dimensional topography of 884 irregular planes where landscape and architecture merge.
This geometry is embodied as a polychrome mosaic, combining flowers of four different types and colours with mosaics made of broken pieces of local Chinese ceramics. Flowers and ceramics, a colourful mosaic bringing together nature and local craft, have a harmony integrated with the unique character of nature. The building geometry of the Ceramic Museum was designed as an extension of the fractured geometry of the park and materialised with the same ceramic tiles used in the paving of the park. These tiles can be seen on the building façade with glazed openings combined with irregular patterns.
Activator of Public Life
The park and the museum activate public life in two ways. On the one hand, Mosaic Park aims to activate the use of public space, while the iconic nature of the project invites visitors to experience a multi-sensory experience. The different elements of the park are sized according to the human scale to provide comfortable spaces for walking, sitting and playing. The park is also equipped with long benches for spontaneous gatherings between citizens. The Ceramics Museum, on the other hand, creates a new meeting point for citizens through its function as an activator of Jinzhou's cultural and social life, arousing visitors' curiosity about the history of the place, transmitting a lost tradition and creating a new meeting point for citizens through its programme of exhibitions and public events.
Social Platform
The Museum of Ceramics is designed as an open structure that offers a new social platform to showcase the work of local artists, designers and craftsmen working and experimenting with the tradition of ceramics and porcelain. This building not only aims to arouse citizens' interest in their traditions, but also to promote the local creative industry and contemporary design. This emblematic and modern space offers a venue for the exhibition, dissemination and sale of local crafts.
It can be said that the Ceramic Museum aims not only to promote the public use of the park, but also to stimulate the local economy and the cultural life of the city. In this way, the park and the museum aim to create a wider social impact beyond the initial recreational purpose.
References:https://www.archdaily.com/445914/ceramic-museum-and-mosaic-park-casanova-hernandez-architects?ad_source=search&ad_medium=projects_tab