Songzhuang: the artists’ village

Located in Tong Zhou District, in the eastern outskirts of Beijing, Songzhuang is the most famous and biggest artist community in China. The first artists, including Yue Minjun and Fang Lijun, moved here in the early 1990’s after having been driven out of another community near the Old Summer Palace in Beijing’s north-west. For more than ten years, these artists were virtual outcasts with much of their work politically inspired, living and working under the watchful eye of the Communist authorities. With the boom in the Chinese art market, Songzhuang is undergoing a dramatic expansion of its artist population, which reached 4000 in 2008.

DnA’s first involvement with Songzhuang was in 2005, via the Songzhuang Art Center competition for the first non-profit art facility built by both local village government and the artist community. The building was conceived not only as a temple for artists but also an exchange and interactive platform for the villagers and the art community.

In past years, the dramatic increase in the artist population and the demand for artists’ working and living spaces prompted many new constructions in Songzhuang village. A 20-unit artists’ residence facing a fishpond on a former outdoor-storage lot is one of the local developments responding to this demand.

This complex reflects an alternative living and working style: the artists live in their studios, not always working but sometimes just hanging out with fellow artists. The studio or working space is their living room as well as a salon and exhibition space. They also invent outdoor spaces for various activities and artistic performances.

The programmatic requirements of working and living define the height and geometry of both volumes: a six-metre height for working spaces and three metres for living ones; a simple rectangular box for the studio and a complex geometry for living with a bedroom, kitchen and toilet. The living volume is plugged into the working volume either on the same level or via a staircase to an upper level. The exterior is clad in dark grey concrete and coated in orange on the horizontal surfaces, to reflect both the industrial and village character.

The 20 units on this site are organized to resemble stacked containers in homage to the site’s previous use as an industrial outdoor-storage lot. This creates an expressive configuration and unique spatial quality with a series of accidental spaces acting as blank canvases for the artists to fill with activities. The interplay of volume, void, light and shadow is a catalyst allowing artists and visitors to constantly explore and experiment in the outdoor community space.

Basically, this complex is an alternative museum for live art creation and exhibitions.

Xu Tiantian