Büro Ziyu Zhuang embeds Zi Museum cluster into Xianning meadow

Chinese studio Büro Ziyu Zhuang has completed the Zi Museum, a 3,000-square-metre pale-concrete building at the centre of a four-building cultural cluster embedded in parkland along Zishan Lake in Xianning, Hubei Province.

The project comprises four public buildings designed to complement the guest houses of the Ziyouji resort on the opposite side of the lake. The centrepiece museum is a multi-faceted, layered structure organised around a central courtyard. Büro Ziyu Zhuang, which works under the abbreviation BUZZ, created three separate access points at various levels to follow the natural elevation of the landscape.

The cluster delivers 3,920 square metres of floor area in total, commissioned by client Hubei United Investment Group Co, Ltd. The figures anchor the scale: the museum alone accounts for roughly three-quarters of the built programme.

How do visitors move through the museum?

The ground floor holds flexible gallery spaces and a garden restaurant. A lower-level entrance sits near the main traffic route to ease installation setup and collection storage.

A path from the main building leads to a viewpoint closer to the lake. From there, visitors can pass into the central courtyard and up a viewing ramp to the rooftop.

"Visitors who are here for nature viewing are able to bypass the interior gallery space, accessing the rooftop viewing platform directly from the outdoor park, while a different circulation was created for those who are here for the gallery exhibitions," explained BUZZ.

"This allows serious academic exhibition and relaxed social gathering to co-exist in the same building," the studio continued.

BUZZ organised the interiors as an "open labyrinth". Galleries, public passages, rest areas and hospitality spaces intertwine in a free-flowing route designed to evoke wandering through a Chinese garden.

In plain terms: nature visitors and exhibition visitors never have to collide.

What are the other three buildings?

Next to the museum stands a viewpoint the studio calls a "meditation tower". Stairs circulate around a hollow core and continue underground, leading to a sunken courtyard wrapped in metal mesh. The tower also serves small outdoor gatherings and exhibitions.

The third building, a rammed-earth workshop, was designed to embed into the landscape. Like the museum, it carries a walking ramp that leads to a grass-covered rooftop while slightly revealing the entrance below.

The final building is a bookshop with an overhanging roof that shelters an entrance facing the main street. It steps down towards the lake, where a glass facade opens views over the parkland and water.

Why does the cluster "blend seamlessly" into the meadow?

BUZZ avoided a set visitor route. The studio instead aimed to open the public art space from every direction of the park.

"The overall project manifests as a continuous, open expansion of green space, which provides the flexibility needed for diverse future operations," BUZZ said.

"There are no forced axes or rigid zoning between individual buildings; instead, they are connected organically through gentle slopes, undulating lawns, and landscaped pathways, blending seamlessly into the existing meadow," the studio continued.

The takeaway: the architecture defers to the meadow rather than dominating it.

Who is Büro Ziyu Zhuang?

Architect Ziyu Zhuang founded the studio in 2016. It now operates offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Berlin — ten years from founding to a three-city practice.

Recent work includes a UFO-shaped gallery that sinks into grassland in Inner Mongolia and a Longquan Mountain observatory near Chengdu that the studio said resembles a "spaceship or alien form".

Principal designers on the Xianning project were Ziyu Zhuang, Na Li, Zhengdong Qi and Ye Yang, supported by a 15-member design team. Hubei Provincial Architectural Design Institute produced the construction drawings, with construction by Hubei Construction Infrastructure Construction Co, Ltd and interior construction by Suzhou Gold Mantis Construction Decoration Co, Ltd.

The Xianning cluster signals the studio's direction: low-slung cultural buildings that double as public parkland, a model the firm is now repeating across provincial China.