SCHOOL OF LIGHT

Dingyage Education Training Center is located in the prosperous downtown of Wuxi City. Walking through the bustling downtown area, the designers intended to transform the location into a tranquil place independent from the outside world, allowing visitors who step into the place to instantly perceive a conception of“deep mountains once the door is closed”.

As a prominent ancient Chinese philosopher，Chuang Tzu says“all beautiful things follow when the heart is quiet, unperturbed and boundless”.

Following this trend of philosophy, the designer team sought spatial forms and materials aligned to this conception and then incorporate them in the light to reconstruct the overall architectural environment based on the form of this building.

With an original irregular shape, the main building features a combination of free, organic spaces that give rise to highly variable spatial experiences. After combing through the existing conditions, the designer team aspired to create a closer integration between indoor and natural spaces to extend visual interactivity. A grey-white architectural style was adopted to make the building blend into the surrounding environment. The existing two-storey structure was a half-ceilinged form, so we enlarged the horizontal windows to guide the“light”inside and allow it wander across the spaces with time. Making the“light”as a guide, reflecting in the variable internal spaces allows wanders inside the building to rethink the relationship between“light”and“architecture”.

This entire building has become a vehicle of “light” that breaks through the boundary between the interior and exterior. For the design of interior details, we transformed all beautiful but abstract things represented by “light” into concrete expressions by using artificial light sources like light prisms, rays and columns to re-construct the indoor spaces. The existence of these light rays not only adds to the diversity of the indoor spaces, but also allows people to have a deeper perception of the relationship between light and architecture.