As the core of industrial architecture, the machine demonstrates a unique aesthetic experience for its functionality, rationality and logic, showing the intelligence and wisdom of human beings. Based on the concept of ‘machine aesthetics’, we regard the machine in the power plant as a set of exquisite ‘artworks’. Inspired by the sensational moment of unveiling an artwork at which the people’s expectations and excitement are reaching the peak, the project tries to create a such moment in architectural language.

 

The upper section of the building has a gentle form and a dynamic motion like a veil being lifted aside. It displays the machinery inside the workshop as an ‘artwork’ to the public through the curtain walls in the northeast corner. By overlapping the plates, and using the fritted glass coated with mirror dots, the facades create a futuristic appearance with a rich experience of visual illusions.

 

The podium of the factory building is enveloped in a double-skin. The outer skin is formed by an array of unitized plates in the shape of folded triangles, creating a rhythmical texture of bending and undulating, bright and dark, making subtle reference to the waves of Yangtze River. To comply with the regulations of fire protection and ventilation, the outer skin remains semi-open, revealing the inner skin of the building, whilst enriching the visual experience of the facade. The chimney is wrapped with a perforated skin formed by rectangular pyramidal units, allowing sufficient natural ventilation , and creating a metaphor for the distillation of waste into energy as the spiral pattern ascends vertically.