Architects:Zhaoyang Architects

Area:1513m²

Photographs:Ce Wang

Construction:Yunnan Dongqifeng Construction Engineering Ltd.

Lead Architecs:Yang Zhao

Design Team:Yang Zhao, Fuhong Liao, He Wang, Luo Su

Structural Engineer:Zhigang Ma

Electromechanical Design:Jing Sun, Xin Li - Kcalin electromechanical design

Lighting Design:Li Huo - Lighting Design Ltd.

Functional Type:Conversion of building, Bookstore

Country:China

Text description provided by the architects. The Shanghai-la Librairie Avant-garde is located in Wugong Village, Xiaozhongdian Town, and is renovated from three traditional Tibetan farmhouses. These existing houses are typical "Shanpian" houses commonly found in the Zhongdian area. This style of Tibetan dwelling is unique to the high-altitude regions of Shangri-La, which experience abundant rain and snow. It represents a quintessential adaptation of Tibetan farming and pastoral culture to the local climate and environment, utilizing locally available materials and tailored to the specific conditions of the area.

Design strategiesDue to the very limited project budget, we could only make renovations based on the existing structure. In fact, even if the budget were more generous, we see no reason to demolish the old to build anew. Although these three Tibetan houses are aged, their main wooden structures are free from insect damage or rot, and they possess considerable structural redundancy. These houses have preserved the scenes of farming and pastoral life in the Shangri-La region before the era of electrification. We also feel a responsibility to revitalize them as cultural heritage of the Zhongdian area, treating the houses and the adjacent fields and pastures as an anthropological text to guide future visitors and readers of the bookstore to experience and understand this land.

From a functional perspective, the main issue with these three Tibetan houses lies in their roofs. The "wooden shingles" of the "Shanpian houses" are made from fir wood, which is abundant in the vast forests of Shangri-La. Fir wood, characterized by its loose texture and straight grain, is manually split into shingles using a wedge-splitting method. Each shingle is about 2-3 cm thick, approximately 20 cm wide, and 90-120 cm long, known as "Shanpian." The split shingles have natural small grooves on their surfaces, which aid in water drainage. However, over time, they still decay. There is even a local saying: the larger the house built by ancestors, the greater the burden on descendants. This is mainly because the "wooden shingles" are actually quite expensive, and their maintenance and replacement represent a long-term financial burden. The three Tibetan houses of the Pioneer Bookstore, having been left unused and unmaintained for a long time, have roofs full of holes, unable to withstand the erosion of rain and snow, leading to cracks and even partial collapse of some rammed earth walls. Consequently, most newly built Tibetan houses in the area have replaced their sloping roofs with lightweight iron sheets, and the "Shanpian" has been reduced to a decorative or "tradition-preserving" element.

The climate in Shangri-La is quite harsh. The cold winter sets in every November and lasts until April of the following year when the land slowly begins to recover. By the time the plateau is cloaked in green again, it is already May. The months of June, July, and August constitute the rainy season, with abundant rainfall. Often, the sky is covered with thick clouds, and it only clears up by evening. Even in summer, one can occasionally feel a damp chill. The plateau experiences intense sunlight, and winters are frequently clear and sunny. Modern Tibetan residential houses have developed a sunroom system. A common practice is to enclose the entire south-facing courtyard with glass, creating a large greenhouse that heats the interior of the house. This approach has become increasingly popular and refined in recent years, to the extent that in Shangri-La City, the prefectural capital, sunrooms have become a standard feature in all new residential constructions. This contemporary vernacular architecture has inspired the primary strategy for our renovation of these three Tibetan houses.

Being performative is the fundamental stance of this renovation project. Since the main wooden structure is intact, we strive to preserve it; since the rammed earth walls can shield against wind and rain and offer excellent thermal performance, we repair the damaged or collapsed sections and retain them. Since the roof is already ruined and the traditional "wooden shingle" roofing system has been phased out by the times, there's no need for sentimentality—we replace it with a new system.

Transformed from a Tibetan house to a bookstore, the building's function shifts from a home to a public space. The first priority is to improve the overly dim interior by allowing more sunlight into the building. Local experience has proven that sunrooms are suitable for Shangri-La's long winters, so we decided to place a lightweight steel roof directly on the original wooden structure of the Tibetan house. We replaced the "wooden shingles" with polycarbonate panels that allow adjustable light transmission and installed electric curtains beneath them to regulate the amount of light entering the interior based on weather conditions. The slope of the roof follows the original form of the "Shanpian house," and the deep overhang of the pitched roof is retained to continue protecting the rammed earth walls from rain damage. From the exterior, the appearance of the Tibetan house standing on the land remains largely unchanged, with only the roofing material becoming slightly lighter and thinner. The once hidden home is suddenly bathed in sunlight, and the living scenes within the traditional Tibetan house are illuminated like museum exhibits, while simultaneously transforming into a new form of public daily life. I believe this can become an appropriate expression of a countryside bookstore.

Adaptive reuseThe three Tibetan houses are designated from east to west as the bookstore, a cultural and creative products shop, and a café, respectively. Accordingly, we adapted the original spaces of the Tibetan houses to meet these three distinct functional needs. The bookstore required a definitive, large space, embodying the atmosphere of a "temple of words" (as described by Yunnan based poet Yu Jian) to meet the expectations of visitors. Although Wugong Village is only half an hour's drive from the high-speed rail station and the highway exit, the region has not yet become a mature destination, and most visitors come specifically for the experience. Therefore, we carved out a two-story atrium in the center of the first Tibetan house, with bookshelves lining the walls and a surrounding wooden structure forming a gallery on the second floor. All books are placed within easy reach, facilitating browsing and reading.

The cultural and creative products shop does not require a large area, so we placed it on the second floor of the second Tibetan house. The entire ground level, including the courtyard space, was designed as the living quarters for the bookstore staff. To ensure adequate ventilation and natural light in the staff dormitory, a section of the floor adjacent to the western back wall was removed to create an indoor atrium.

The café needed to emphasize its operational functionality, as the second floor, while bright and comfortable, was insufficient in space; the ground floor's livestock pen was too low, creating a confined and oppressive atmosphere. Therefore, we excavated the ground of the livestock pen by 45 centimeters, expanding the base of the rammed earth wall to form seating, and the original stone pedestals used as column bases were supported by newly cast concrete blocks, unexpectedly achieving a raised and displayed effect for the livestock pen. The café did not require a large, open space, and the existing room divisions of the old Tibetan house naturally provided spatial zoning and settings for the café, especially the living space around the hearth—featuring shrines, murals, wooden window frames, and water pavilions—which was inherently intriguing.

Circulation and landscapingOn the southern façade of the "Shanpian house," a log cabin-style wooden box was embedded in the rammed earth wall, originally used as a granary (since rammed earth walls are not breathable, the wooden shell ensured ventilation for the granary). After the granary was removed, a more than three-meter-wide opening was left in the rammed earth wall. I then conceived the idea of constructing a concrete corridor at this location, which would guide visitors to walk out from the second floor of the bookstore and gradually approach the ground from a height. This simple sense of ceremony indeed alters the relationship between the old Tibetan house and the land, but I believe it is appropriate, as experiencing the land is just as important as experiencing the Tibetan house. Even from a purely functional perspective, the distance between the houses is too great (56 meters between the bookstore and the cultural and creative products shop, and 38 meters between the cultural and creative products shop and the café). How to link the three houses together to create a continuous experience is also a key consideration in this renovation.

To avoid encroaching on farmland, the bookstore's corridor extends out and then bends back, landing at the courtyard gate. It then follows the ridges of the fields southward to an outdoor platform. Here, there was originally a low wall, serving as a kind of boundary marker. This location is set apart from all three Tibetan houses, offering a vantage point to view the entire scene. From there, one can approach the cultural and creative products shop to the west, climb half a flight of steps to reach a terrace, from which one can overlook the continuous pine forest stretching all the way to the distant Haba Snow Mountain. Passing through the interior of the cultural and creative products shop, a 30-meter-long ramp is elevated above the barley fields, leading directly to the back door of the café courtyard. The café's corridor extends straight out towards the reservoir, allowing for a view of the vast forest in the distance before descending the steps to approach the deeper natural surroundings.

Material and constructionThe budget for this project was extremely tight. The construction team was also determined through the government's bidding process and was a rural construction team. Based on our years of experience in rural practice, under such conditions, we could only opt for the most conventional construction methods, and our expectations for the outcome had to allow ample room for error during the construction process. Compounding the situation was the fact that the original Tibetan houses were built without any concept of basic geometric precision. There were no perfectly vertical columns, no completely parallel beams, and not a single truly level floor. Throughout the renovation process, we constantly had to deal with various uneven and irregular situations.

In this era of rapidly vanishing traditional craftsmanship, even in Yunnan, natural materials and handcrafted methods are becoming scarce and expensive, and may even conflict with increasingly pervasive environmental regulations. Perhaps the more remote the countryside, the more it should utilize industrialized construction systems. The lightweight steel structure and polycarbonate panel roof were the most worry-free aspects of the entire construction process (except for the unforeseen leveling process of the wooden structural beams). The main entrance canopy of the bookstore and the three corridors extending towards the land were cast in concrete. Considering the limited formwork technology and precision of the rural construction team, we simply used the wooden shingles removed from the old Tibetan house roofs as formwork. The deep grain of the wooden shingles resulted in a very mottled surface on the cast concrete, which, as it turned out, matched the overall rough construction style. Another use for the recycled wooden shingles was as cladding for the gable ends of the pitched roofs and as ceiling panels for the overhanging sections. These weathered wooden shingles, coated with varnish, took on a dark brown hue, adding a composed tone between the whitewashed walls with straw fibers and the shiny corrugated panels.

Project gallery