Celadon-clad screen walls line the campus’s arcades, and they can be rotated and moved. Photo © Iwan Baan, click to enlarge.

Celadon pottery has been produced in the city of Longquan, in the southwest corner of Zhejiang province—of which Hangzhou is the capital—since the Song dynasty about a millennium ago. Amateur Architecture Studio, led by Pritzker Prize–winner Wang Shu with Lu Wenyu, has experimented in the use of that fired and glazed clay as a cladding material twice before—the Ceramic House in Jinhau (2006) and Tea House at Linyin Buddhist Temple (2020)—but those projects are dwarfed in scale by the practice’s comprehensive undertaking in Liangzhu.

Here the firm developed a detailed set of drawings specifying the tiles’ dimensions, acceptable shades of green, and placement across the campus’s many buildings, specifications used by three celadon manufacturers, each with their own secret glaze recipes, to produce an array of samples that were carefully scrutinized. The process was a complex affair, and, after several full-scale mock-ups were built, the design team moved forward with 12 specific glaze types.

All in all, some 100,000 square feet of ceramic tiles clad the buildings—the bulk of which are used for the arcade screen walls that encircle the campus’s larger buildings. The tiles, which measure 1 foot by 2½ feet by 5/16 inches, are held in place by oxidized copper surface fasteners that tie back to a nearly 35-foot-tall uniform steel skeleton. This straightforward system sped up construction and installation, and allows for convenient replacement should any tiles be damaged. The skeletal frames are also mounted on either side of steel beams, and can rotate and open with the help of motors to reveal the surrounding landscape, bringing the outdoors in.

This contemporary interpretation of the region’s vernacular design extends to other materials and methods as well. Notably, the design team supervised live demonstrations of rammed-earth construction techniques for the project’s contractor, and the lessons gleaned were then scaled up to carve out program within the larger concrete superstructures. In the campus’s larger halls, intricate wood-and-steel canopies hearken back to traditional carpentry, though with monumental spans—the largest of which is nearly 330 feet wide. The Song dynasty may be long past, but its craftspeople would surely appreciate the complex and modern application of the traditional ceramic material for this cultural reliquary.

Click drawings to enlarge