The north coast
In late July, there were heavy rains along the coast. The dark sky and sea made the floating rain glisten and spill on the brown sand.
The doors and Windows are closed, a vertical light is on, and only one person sits on a row stool on the top floor. Concrete walls arch overhead, and a two-metre-thick ceiling resembles steel arms. Like a bug in a cave, this man is excited and quiet, watching the silent lightning go out on the sloping sea — a wonder that belongs to sun dongping, designer of on site.
After the library has been handed over to developers, she sits here every day, looking after the library from the perspective of a designer. No posters on the walls, no potted plants brought in, she stares at the beach, and when the wind blows, pushes the sand back from the front steps.
The sunny days belong to the reader, and the 21 circular spots of light on the ceiling are everywhere, leaping from the sky to the floor, joining the crowd and bouncing back into the shadows. The wind enters through the doors and Windows of the building and swims among more than 20 readers. Concrete bare solid texture, fine texture. In the empty curator’s room, a warm light and a cool light drifted along the walls. At noon, the two lights exchanged colors. The cool light gradually warmed, and the warm light gradually cooled.
The library is docile and robust, with a simple square under the sky that draws people to its inner world. The library is docile and robust, with a simple square under the sky that draws people to its inner world.
Books are not classified as they are in a library, picked and put at random. Every morning, Director Meng would sit at a writing desk on the second floor of the library, checking donations and letters from readers. At his elbow was a large glass window overlooking the sea, and at his back was a thick concrete window, from which the sea breeze would leave the library and return to the beach.
From his point of view, literature, history and philosophy dominate the bookshelves, facing the sea and facing the ever-changing waves, and the landscape looks like the end of the world.
A year ago, Sun Dongping went to the construction site to see how the library was made.
The cement workers were pouring the wall, which needed a rough texture with a cryptic wood grain. Workers make mistakes all the time, and there is an inherent paradox in this idea of work that has to be rough, but coarser. The workers were frantic. They find it very difficult to imitate nature, and once made, objects seem to come alive. Much to the workers’ dismay, these mechanisms ended up silent and in the dark.
On the third wall, where the wood grain is clear enough to form a natural state with the exposed cement, the building is embedded in the sand dunes on the coast, like a textured stone.
Commercial faux pas
In March 2013, Anaya Beach in Changli County, Qinhuangdao was still desolate, but Mayin felt great.
Desolation is in his frame of mind. He needed a place to hide when he didn’t want to go the way he had gone before. The fisherman moored the boat on the shore to examine the treasure he had obtained from the sea. There is a scallop factory on the south edge of the beach, working slowly. Few tourists dangle from Beidaihe.
Anaya used to be a tourist resort project of Eacheng Group, but development was slow and it was considered a hard sell after Eacheng sold off.
In 2007, Eatontown bought Anaya Beach; In 2008, Eacheng returned it to its native land; In 2009, Yicheng bought it again; When Yicheng was acquired by HNA in 2013, it was returned to Tudi.
The last time they traded, they said, “Mayin, why don’t you do it?” He flipped.
Mr. Ma’s house in Beijing is not small, with its own study and listening room, but he feels he still desperately needs a place to live. Getting back to the heart, that’s the trajectory of human life. But the road back is not so simple, the difficulty lies in how to get rid of the strong external forces and rebuild their own life.
In 1970, Italian architect Paolo Soleri bought 5,200 acres of desert wasteland north of Phoenix, Arizona, and set out to build his own utopian city, Arco Sands, which was seen as the prototype of the world’s first ecological community. Soleri’s goal, in addition to keeping energy consumption and car use to a minimum, is to help people communicate with each other, make their lives meaningful here, and be a good community to solve.
Akosandi is to Soleri what Anaya is to Mayin.
As Anaya pushed forward, he encountered resistance from the ebb and flow of the housing market. On an ordinary evening, with the ambivalence of a gamer, a group of Haidian estates dines together as usual. Inspired by a certain level of alcohol, Mayin spoke of his ideals. “I wanted to build a public library a long time ago, and I think now is the right time.” Mr. Mayin said this image came to mind as he strolled along the desolate beach — where the fishing boats were anchored, the fishermen’s children should have a place to read.
All of a sudden, the atmosphere at the table was moving. His friend, Lao Sang, raised his glass. “It’s about time. You have a good humanities, your life experience supports your ideals, the seaside library will be a pure affair.”
At the age of 40, Mayin has made a “business no-no” — “I make myself a goal and do whatever I personally like. I’ve taken what I’ve accumulated in my life and brought it here.”
Is really
Shunchi, which started in 1999, pays young people 3, 000 yuan, twice the salary of a civil servant. Ma Yin left the government department to catch the ship Shunchi. The real estate company started with 18 people and worked out its first project. By 2001, it was running 21 projects simultaneously, with employees becoming project managers.
After only a year in the job, Mr. Ma became the project’s general manager. Two years later, Ma Yin became assistant to the group’s president, and four years later, at the age of 29, he became general manager of Shunchi East China.
Shunchi has greatly boosted the ambitions of young people, who are proud to earn three times as much as five times their peers. Everywhere they went, local governments and contractors snapped up the booming real estate industry, which has become the core of China’s economy. Everyone was buying houses, and some even bought more than a dozen apartments. Inside Shunchi, young people grow up fast under the powerful influence of founder Sun Hongbin. They are still in the auditorium in the middle of the night, talking in turn about “mission”, “strategy”, “execution” and “high goal”.
In 2004, Shunchi’s revenue exceeded 10 billion yuan, surpassing Vanke, which was the product of the Pentium era. Shunchi, like a hot iron, has left a mark in the history of China’s real estate development, as well as in the spirit of its employees.
But this is also a short year, shunchi suddenly become too big. Ma Yin in front of the frontier to open the work of soil, the company is busy with the land, until the subordinates are finished. Looking back later, the real estate boom seems to have been annihilated.
From 2002 to 2012, 15 market regulation measures failed one after another. As a social movement sweeping across the country, property speculation is etched in the youth memory of a generation.
In 2005, Ma Yin took Eacheng Group as a new starting point for his career. This is a top-down company that relies on leadership decisions. Shunchi and Yicheng are like two inverted pyramids. Ma Yin has learned something completely different from them. In 2009, The Xishan Mansion jointly built by Ma Yin, Xie Chunzhen and Lao Sang sold 3.6 billion yuan that year. In this year, yicheng group had annual sales of 6 billion yuan, making it the most brilliant year in the company’s history. The chairman immediately set the sales target of the next year at 10 billion yuan.
In fact, China’s private real estate enterprises at this moment to the scale of ten billion.
It took only 30 years from the birth of the first private economy in 1978 to the ten-billion enterprise. But insiders know that the glare is also a speck. As house prices soar, real estate companies become a giant digestive system that relies on quick land grabs and repatriated funds to make money, just like a giant with an ever-faster metabolism, relying on larger scale to maintain larger consumption, otherwise it will be dragged down by its own growth.
In 2012, Mr. Ma became president of Eacheng group. At the time, the housing market had just slid past its super-boom era. Ma Yin, Lao Sang and Xie Chunzhen began to observe the haidian area carefully. They extracted elements from books and streets, recognized Haidian as a site for Chinese culture, and developed the concept of humanistic real estate.
In 2009, west Hill Washington was the high point of the humanities real estate market. Then, they connect the ink painting of Everbright, Everbright Garden, Wancheng Huafu, Xishan Huafu, Yanxi Huafu, Yihe Original, Greentown · Imperial Garden, Xishan and eight universities into a “context”.
In 2012, the property situation reversed. In 2013, Yicheng changed hands and announced its exit from the real estate industry. The relationship between the traditional spirit and contemporary life, which had been on the verge of appearing, began to make people wonder whether all this was just a false plan.
The library seems to be a relic, but its relationship with people in spirit is very close. The library seems to be a relic, but its relationship with people in spirit is very close.
At lunch one day, the cook brought in a bowl of soup swirling with milky white powder.
“What kind of food is it? Ma Yin asked the cook, looking into the bowl.
“It’s a high-end dish. It costs 60 yuan a bowl in restaurants.”
Mayin took a bite. “Do you like this?”
“I don’t.”
“I don’t like it either, but you seem to enjoy making it.”
The cook thought for a moment, “This is a very expensive dish.”
“You see this good, you can eat what you like to do for me.”
“That won’t do.”
Mr. Mayin wheeled the chef into the kitchen and found a dish of tomato puree in the pot. He picked up a chopstick to taste, patted the cook on the shoulder, “This is good.”
“You can’t eat this.”
“Why not?”
“It’s home-cooked.”
“I don’t want to mess with those empty, I am real.”
The cook looked miserable.
“I don’t want a job in real estate anymore,” Mr. Mayin said. “I want to do something, but I don’t know what to do.”
At first he thought of it as an ordinary midlife crisis, but gradually he began to reflect on life in all its aspects. “I’m tired of everything. I feel more or less the same. Life is repetition and repetition, and I wonder if I can do something concrete. A very specific piece.”
“The industry has hurt me a lot.” Real estate is a great thing. But many years of utilitarianism, standardization, formalization, capitalization, the ideal feelings to the death. This society is not without feelings, but without the origin of activation.”
The cosmopolitan Chinese community did not make it, and someone kept looking. Holding the steering wheel with one hand, Xie chunzhen identified it on the street. He asks: “Do contemporary Chinese people have a sense of patriotism?”
“Yes.” He looks through the window and points to a young migrant worker with a backpack. “He’s an ordinary Haidian man. He was plain and plain dressed. He has read Liang Qichao, Wang Guowei and Hu Shi. In a word, he has been deeply influenced by knowledge. You can feel an air of idealism in him.
It’s not a beautiful house
What is the best and most suitable project location for Anaya?
For two years, Mayin kept thinking about this question as he traveled three hours and hours between Anaya and Beijing. Sometimes he wondered whether he was qualified, whether many ideas were a form of greed, and whether man-made objects were an affront to nature.
Two years on, the journey from Beijing to Anaya is still eager and eager to try. But when he arrived at the beach, he was cautious and had to remind himself to protect its openness and the possibility of growth.
This repeated question and answer made Mayin understand that anaya’s greatest value should be to re-examine the relationship between people and themselves, between people and things, and between people.
He finally discovered that anaya had two spirits of place in its soil: joy and peace. It’s a place to restore intimacy that we’ve long neglected. What he should do is to present, extend, deduce and sublimate the two qualities of joy and silence, making them a part of reality.
After all his thoughts had settled, he summoned his friends to drink and talk, and the seaside library planned to break ground.
In a sanlitun studio several days after drinking, Mr. Sang took Mr. Mayin up to the second floor and through seven or eight white building models. In front of an open square table, a black-clad architect stood.
“You talk about the seaside library.”
Ma Yin was dressed in Chinese soap and Dong Gong in black. Both sides were impressed with the art of architecture, and the firm turned down six or seven times more developers than it worked with. Dong gong introduced himself: “This is my workshop. The only criterion is the artistic quality of the building.”
In 1999, Dong received a master’s degree in architecture from Tsinghua University. In 2000, he went to Germany to study as an exchange student. In 2001, Dong received his master’s degree from the University of Illinois. In the past 20 years, of the more than 80 people in the architecture department of Tsinghua University, there are only less than five people who still insist on doing design in the real sense. Born in the 1970s, these students, after going abroad, wander in the most high-quality architectural space in the world. After that, they are tortured by the big question, what is the ultimate purpose of architecture?
“The Times need something simple, natural, something that will endure the passage of time.” Ma Yin said.
Two months later, the two were walking in Anaya.
Dong walks on the beach, taking pictures of a rusty anchor, a wooden stake and a temporary house in the sand. Finally, he stays alone in the temporary house by the sea, looking at the “infinite expression” of the sea.
“The shape of the building must be simple, just like a stone,” Dong suggested. “It is an object that grows out of the surrounding factors naturally and contains some kind of human experience. They are more a relationship between land art and the sea and the beach than a beautiful house. These two buildings are connected with the whole region, bearing the function of reminder, supplement or contrast on human experience, which can make people calm down. That’s what they mean.”
Like a stone
In March 2014, the project was launched.
In June 2014, the line was dug and released.
In July 2014, it began to make wooden concrete.
Dong Gong sets out from specific problems to shape the exclusive relationship between architecture and its dependent site, user, mode of use, light and wind, etc. One of the library’s first clear ideas was, “To be an object growing on the beach.
On the site, concrete meets sand, space grows, and then height, width and depth are related to people. The site expresses its function more and more clearly. A concrete object gradually rises from the earth’s surface, while bamboo, steel and glass continue to meet, forming an island in the empty atmosphere.
In December 2014, five construction workers lifted a large piece of glass and installed it in the large window of the library. The bright winter sun cut them into silhouettes. Standing in the middle of the library, Dong gong saw the sea level being invited into the library by the large window. The bright light outside contained his deep passion.
The moment people are exposed to light, they are in a state of unconsciousness. You know you’re entering a strong atmosphere, but you don’t know what it is. At the University of Illinois, Dong’s mentor spent his life studying the relationship between natural light and space. Later, Dong Gong often searched for the divinity of this kind of light in the landscape, factories and streets. The meaning of light in architecture goes far beyond lighting. Light is a natural relation between man and nature, a touching, pure and primitive substance, which is the ultimate problem in architecture.
In May 2015, The Lonely Library was completed. The library has three levels of seating, each with a view of its own charm. There are no columns in the pavilion, and the back wall curves into an arch to form an important stand.
There is a subtle rational beauty in the building, with precise modularity control, height, width, and proper partition of the facade. But every corner is very emotional, concrete walls, wooden tables, leather chairs and glass, calmly expressing their own texture, and as a whole, this natural element becomes a cultural state. The sand was 15 centimetres above the door. The tides rise and fall with the seasons, and the last time was 15 meters away. No solitary reading has such a rich response.
The library is docile and strong, with a simple square under the sky that invites to its inner world, and the zen smell of wood-grain concrete that makes time flow around it, while it lies like a stone.
Since May 2015, tourists from all over the country have been frantically visiting. Children in schools for the deaf, soldiers in the army, investors in holiday real estate, college students on bicycles from Dalian, local government officials and art-scorped youths had to limit the number to 200 a day and sign up a week in advance.
The library stands on the beach, without the connection of the plank road, you must not be content with the sand trekking to the past. There is no Posting, hanging or planting in the library, which restrains the comfort and keeps the hardness of the spiritual space.
In June 2015, after the recruitment post of Director of Lonely Library was sent out, he received 20,000 application letters from all over the country. Finally, Lao Meng, 60 years old, got this information through his daughter in France, and became the first director of Lonely Library, and got the “most beautiful job in this era”.
In December 2014, the Architectural Record magazine and website awarded its annual Architectural Pioneer Award for architecture, calling the Lonely Library a “work of light” with its dramatic morning and evening lights.
Such as the wind to
Rhubarb lives with the monsoon. When the wind came from Thailand, he went to Australia when the wind came from Australia. Now he came to Anaya.
In July, there were 17 or 18 days of force 4 winds, and these mornings, neighbors watched from their Windows as the man sent his kite up into the sky and steered it over the sea.
Those who are normally consumed by things take off their T-shirts, expose their white shoulders and bellies, and follow rhubarb into the sea. Every day in August was as beautiful as gold, but the wind suddenly disappeared and the old boys sat in a row by the sea, waiting for the wind to come.
On the way to The Lonely Library, scaffolding is being removed from a spire, an all-white structure that appears to hang in the air, with white stairs rising from the sand and crossing the sea to connect white boxes in the air, and a cross on the spire. This is anaya’s seaside church. It is dong Gong’s second work.
The seaside church in Anaya is dong gong’s second work. The seaside church in Anaya is dong gong’s second work.
In early September, on the day of the completion of the church, they held a “Brothers outside The North Gate of Tsinghua university” salon on the beach to commemorate a group of mature 70 years later, imitating the days when they played piano, sang songs, ate barbecue, boasted and picked up girls.
In Anaya on Saturday, residents walked to a Martian bonfire on the beach as neighbors sang and danced together.
For a year, anaya was alive with a relaxed and loving life. Full of peace and joy, the inhabitant’s life provided a more appealing pattern.
The library seems to be a relic, but its relationship with people in spirit is very close. This landscape at the end of the land, which attracts the most urbanites, paradoxically reveals the spirit of the city. It is not until the rich money has dissipated that people have a chance to appreciate the building itself.
Xie Chunzhen drank three glasses of beer while looking out at the library in the sunset. He witnessed the formation of the life state of the scholar, “this is the face of this era.”
The good way of life is far from complete.
Beijing has transformed itself from the calm of 100 years ago into a seething metropolis of buildings, subways, roads and apartments that continue to expand, still unable to meet demand, and a daily plume of car exhaust and restaurant smoke that shrouds the entire northern Chinese sky. Excessive expansion of the real estate economy, a huge gap in the city. Make life feel a sense of failure like never before.
It’s a sore spot. China’s property boom has swallowed its soul. The library, a lonely landscape in the desert, was an anomaly, casting shadows of a few explorers.
The wind is coming.
Mayin stood on the sea of Anaya, arms outstretched, the kite rising overhead in the wind. He gets on a skateboard, suppresses the wind with his back, and slides out to sea at 40 knots. All through August there was not much wind at force 4, and with a little luck, the old boys on Anaya beach stood up and headed for the waves, their hair flying.
After four hours stuck in a traffic jam in Beijing, Mr. Mayin was rewarded when he dashed out into the open sea for a bird-like jump on a small wave.
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