“Pingtan Book House”, designed and built by Prof. Peter W. Ferretto and his team at Condition_Lab, is a small timber library that retains traditional Dong vernacular architectural language. The library, devised to inspire a love of both books and Dong culture in the local community, serves as a form of living heritage and addresses the issue of “village hollowing” in rural China.
Below are news or interviews related to this project.
Source Space Magazine, South Korea
Date 15.10.2022
Excerpt
【Based within the School of Architecture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the research organisation Condition_Lab studies solutions to conserve and restore indigenous values and practices that are disappearing from rural areas. The architecture prototype ‘Book House’ which the team has developed over many years with the ‘Dong’ people – a minority in China – is an experiment as well as a practice that seek to recover the town’s identity and vitality, and this has been realised as Gaobu Book House (2018) and Pingtan Book House (2021).】
Source Office of Academic Links E-News, CUHK
Date 4.2022
Excerpt
【The research team saw the opportunity to build a new library based on a timber structure that retains traditional Dong vernacular architectural language, in hope of reawakening a sense of wonder in the Dong culture among schoolchildren and adults alike. Serving as a form of living heritage, the Pingtan Book House encourages local children to explore a space that recalls their rich traditions and to appreciate their culture by engaging with it up-close on a day-to-day basis.】
Source The Standard, Hong Kong
Date 15.3.2022
Excerpt
【With the team's aim of cultivating children's interest in reading books while playing, creating a new paradigm for rural village libraries, the
actualization comes from the team's professional knowledge in architecture and
was inspired by Lello & Irmao Bookstore in Porto, Portugal. Another architectural feature about the building, as well as Condition-Lab's
philosophy, involves locality. Ferretto said the book-house is built the traditional Dong way, using only a
single material - wood without any nails. 】
