Monday, 11 May 2020

At First I Was Not Quite Sure What I Was Looking At,

dark mountains with an almost pearlescent structure on them,


  in fact it is a white membrane stretched over the curved rooftop of Jiunvfeng Study, a mountainside visitor centre built by Gad Line+ Studio above Dongximen Village in Shangdong, China,

considered China's most famous sacred mountain, Mount Tai has been a place of worship for 3,000 years, "Compared with the magnificence and sublimity of Mount Tai, Jiunvfeng is simple and restrained," said Gad Line+ Studio, "We hoped to build 'a floating cloud hovering in the mountains' to respond to the magnificent cloud sea of Mount Tai." a lightweight steel frame forms the delicate skeleton of the pavilion, which perches on a rocky ridge looking towards Mount Tai,

 the pavilion, commissioned by Tai'an's tourism body, has panoramic views over the sacred mountain and Shenlong Grand Canyon

 curved glass walls along the outward-facing side form a long viewing platform for visitors,

 at one end, a coffee shop has tables to sit at while taking in the scenery, LED lighting strips are built into the double-layer membrane of the canopy, which has an insulating layer reflective foil, "At night, the whole curved inner membrane radiates evenly, and the light escapes from the high windows between the stone walls and the membrane surfaces," said Gad Line+ Studio. "It looks like a cloud with a halo from a distance."


given the remote site, the pavilion was designed to be built quickly during the good weather between April and September 2019, raised foundations give the pavilion extra height to look over the treetops, the curve of the pavilion follows the line of the hilltop it sits on, its back wall is built of rocky rubble, splitting to curve either side of the entrance, clerestory windows run along the top of the wall before the start of the curved roof, an arc-shaped ring beam loops around the perimeter of the roof, with 28 steel arched keels connecting to form the frame for the double-layer membrane, the rubble walls are made from local stone selected by the architects for its colour, Gad Line+ Studio was founded in 2018 by Meng Fanhao and Zhu Peidong and is based in Hangzhou, what a totally unique way to see Mount Tai.


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