JAIME CORREA
and Associates
ZHUHAI BLACK BOX
Design Team: Jaime Correa
The school of architecture of Jilin University, in China, is currently lacking a dedicated exhibition space for students, faculty, and visiting critics. This proposal supplies that absence with a new pavilion located in one of the existing building courtyards at the Zhuhai campus. A black concrete box, laid as a curtain, encloses a white stucco exhibition cube (24 ft X 24 ft) which is indirectly illuminated by means of three skylights at different angles -adding up to 18.5 ft in height. The profile of these three skylights is reminiscent of the prototypical Chinese village home; the skylights are also meant to deliver certain degrees of luminescence in the eastern tradition of northern diffuse lighting and space called “yugen”. The pavilion faces a 24 ft square plinth with a surrounding bench; the bench and the plinth serve as an additional public space in a campus where public space is a luxury.