Architecture

China’s Longfu Life Experience Center

The Longfu Life Experience Center by LUO Studio.

Image courtesy of: Arch Daily

Living in a vibrant, ever changing city, you see real estate sales centers everywhere. They spring up, marking the arrival of a new skyscraper, and are vacant several months or a year later. If successful, these centers are guaranteed to be transitory. Chinese firm, LUO Studio, took a different approach when designing the Longfu Life Experience Center in the Henan province.

The interior of the Longfu Life Experience Center by LUO Studio.

Image courtesy of: About Design Library

The building is built as a modular structure with a series of “clustered columns.” This building is designed to be easily expanded or shrunk as needed. It can even be dismantled and reconstructed at another site. The columns create enough open space to make the building flexible to accommodate most programs.

The Interior of the Longfu Life Experience Center by LUO Studio.

Image courtesy of: Arch Daily

The building is modeled after Chicago’s own S.R. Crown Hall by Mies van der Rohe. Crown Hall is designed on a 5’ grid where every window mullion and paving joint conforms to the grid. The primary building for the Architecture School at the Illinois Institute of Technology, this 5’ grid was set up as a learning tool for architecture students. Students designing a hypothetical space can easily count the mullions and get an idea of what any sized space will feel like.
Chicago’s S.R. Crown Hall by Mies van der Rohe.
Image courtesy of: Behance

This building is widely regarded as one of Mies van der Rohe’s masterpieces. Completed in 1956, it is one of the most architecturally significant buildings of the 20th century Modernist movement.  The architect refined the basic steel and glass construction style… this beautifully captured simplicity and openness.