Silver Interior Space and Exhibition Design · 2025
Wulin Star Exhibition Hall
- A' Design Award 2025 Silver Winner in Interior Space and Exhibition Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Zpdi
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 18,921
- Verification code A2AB90BFA0 · Verify this award
About Wulin Star Exhibition Hall
Wulin Star is an exhibition hall created inside two historic factory buildings in Hangzhou. The renovation preserves the original structure and the industrial details of the old plant as far as possible. A revolving door of 8.5 meters in height rotates 360 degrees without a ground track, and a large folding screen is carried by an upper steel truss. The existing pipelines were reorganized and combined with custom mechanical devices. Idle interior areas are transformed into an active public space for exhibitions, art and commerce.
YINPING YAO's Wulin Star Exhibition Hall emerges as a distinguished exemplar of contemporary adaptive reuse practice, transforming industrial infrastructure into a vessel for cultural exhibition while maintaining profound respect for the material authenticity of its manufacturing past. The design demonstrates sophisticated understanding of the tension between preservation and reinvention, allowing original concrete structural columns to stand in their weathered state as testimony to the building's former life while introducing precisely detailed interventions in gleaming white steel and functional corrugated cladding. The spatial strategy appears to embrace what architectural theorists term "honest construction," where structural systems, mechanical infrastructure, and material junctions remain visible rather than concealed, inviting visitors to read the building's tectonic logic as clearly as any exhibited content. The treatment of light proves particularly masterful, with carefully positioned apertures in the wall system admitting controlled passages of natural illumination that track across the polished floor throughout the day, transforming the exhibition hall into a sundial of sorts where time becomes tangible. The reflective floor surface doubles the overhead truss geometry, creating a spatial experience that oscillates between grounded materiality and ethereal dematerialization. This interplay between the weighty presence of concrete and the lightness of reflected sky suggests meditation on the nature of industrial spaces themselves, how their scale and structural clarity can accommodate transformation across generations of use. The curving overhead track system hints at the kinetic possibilities of exhibition design, suggesting that the space anticipates choreographed movement of displayed objects or lighting elements. Visitors might consider how such spaces serve as palimpsests, where industrial memory and cultural present coexist in productive dialogue, each enriching the reading of the other.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- As the factory building is a historical structure, the primary principle of internal renovation is to preserve the original spatial appearance and details of the factory building to the greatest extent possible. On the basis of not damaging the original structure, industrial style devices such as large corrugated aluminum plate revolving doors and large LED folding screens have been designed. In addition, we have reorganized the intricate pipelines, interweaving and integrating customized large mechanical devices, orderly arranged pipelines, and the spatial characteristics of the old factory building, transforming the idle space inside the old factory building into a positive and dynamic space.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The building area of Building 3 is 7837.72 square meters. The building area of Building 4 is 1784.35 square meters.
- Tags
- Exhibition,Renovation,remains,device
- Production Technology
- The exhibition hall of Building 3's Expo Center features a large revolving door with a height of 8.5 meters and a trackless design on the ground. It has both electric and manual operation modes, allowing for 360 degree rotation and parking. Each door weighs about 2 tons, and a carefully designed steel structure column is placed on the ground in the center. The rotating door is assisted by the upper circular track, zipper, and chemical anchor bolts on both sides of the steel door frame and the original column to prevent overturning.
- Design Challenge
- The overall weight of the folding screen in Building 4 is as high as 9 tons. In order to meet the requirements of site leveling, the folding screen cannot be designed with a ground track and is all lifted by the upper steel truss. On the premise of not affecting the current factory building, the overall foundation design needs to avoid the original factory building foundation. Place the foundation design in the middle of the factory building, relying on the beam end to make a ground beam cantilever to support the upper overall steel structure.
- Project Duration
- The project started construction in Hangzhou in March 2024 and was completed and officially opened to the public in November 2024.
- Operation Flow
- The public nature of the project gives it a strong affinity and attracts a wide range of public participation. This participation not only promotes the popularization of aesthetic education and the dissemination of culture, but also greatly enhances the social value of cultural venues, enabling designers to better realize their original intentions. By integrating history and modernity, culture and life, the Wulin Star Expo Center is not only an exhibition space, but also a city cultural landmark that connects the past and the future, inspires inspiration and dialogue.
- Research
- The project is positioned as a model for the protection and utilization of industrial heritage in Hangzhou, a heavyweight project for urban internationalization, and a benchmark for organic renewal. It aims to promote urban cultural development, enhance urban quality, and better serve Hangzhou's urban development and internationalization process through the organic combination of exhibitions, art, and commerce.
- Inspiration
- The protection and utilization strategy of this project is to allow history and the future to intersect here, making the space itself a medium for storytelling. Design should not only preserve the original elements to the greatest extent possible, but also allow for the coexistence of old and new elements. Through the contrast, tension, and interaction between old and new, a balance can be found to create a cultural landmark that combines historical value and modern functionality.
- Image Credits
- Photographer GuoWei Liu
Colors of Wulin Star Exhibition Hall
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