Neri&Hu surrounds Junshan Cultural Center with angled aluminium louvres

Angled aluminium louvres cover the reclaimed brick walls of the Junshan Cultural Center near Beijing, China, designed by Neri&Hu.

Nestled amongst the mountains around Miyun Resevoir, the Junshan Cultural Center transforms an existing two-storey sales building that previously only contained conventional office spaces.

The overhaul was commissioned by a Chinese developer to improve the facilities and go beyond the limited offerings of a traditional sales centre by incorporating a mix of arts and cultural amenities for local people to enjoy.

Neri&Hu's introduced a series of public spaces that include a library, exhibition hall and a bar.

Gardens and courtyards are woven in between the buildings, to complement its mountainous setting.

"The client is a developer in China. As a group they have started to emphasise the need for a community centre that goes beyond the typical services that such centres often provide," said the studio's founders Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu.

"The previous function of the building was purely for administrative office work, so given the programmatic shift, there needed to be a complete overhaul," they told Dezeen.

"They wanted to recreate the image of the building to represent their sophisticated lifestyle ethos. The old building was a typical object sitting on a landscape and we urged the client to have the building engage with the landscape more."

Neri&Hu's overhaul of the Junshan Cultural Center makes use of the existing building's concrete structure.

A few floor slabs were removed to create new openings, and a small section of the roof was lost to create a third storey.

It is now distinguished by a bright facade of aluminium louvres. These louvres enclose an inner facade of grey reclaimed bricks, which were chosen by Neri&Hu to reduce the building's visual impact.

from dezeen