In the Chinese county of Xiuwu – located in the central Henan province – architecture firm Atelier Xi completes the construction of a library for the surrounding villages. The project is actually part of a more extensive itinerary of seven point buildings with cultural-recreational functions. The original assignment proposal was only for the design of a 300 square meter public building. However, considering the large catchment area and the difficulty of travelling between scattered villages, the architect preferred to divide the program into a series of miniature structures in different locations to better serve the local communities.

These cast-in-place concrete miniatures, all different in form and program, are “interpreted in a series of tree-like spaces with tentacles reaching up to the sky, immersing themselves in light and shadow.”

Twenty kilometres away from the first intervention, the second episode of the miniature series, Library in Ruins, interfaces with an old residential building in Sunyao Old Village, an ancient village in a mountainous area far from the city centre now entirely abandoned. After an initial attempt to reuse the original rammed-earth technique, architect Chen Xi integrated a new concrete construction into the existing walls, allowing the new structure to grow out of the old ruin.

The elevation and interior spaces are unfolded in a topographical approach, with the undulating profile of the roof echoing the terrain and distant mountains. The building’s serpentine plan – which houses a tiered library and small screening room inside – also reverberates in the network of connecting paths, becoming an extension of the labyrinthine cave system of the surrounding context.