Liyuan Library / Li Xiaodong Atelier

This small building designed by Li Xiaodong Atelier it is the library of Huairou, a small village on the outskirts of Beijing. The choice underlying the project is to build the library not in the town center but a five-minute walk from it, in a place immersed in the nearby mountains, in a context of quiet contemplation.
The building blends with the landscape through the choice of materials and the careful positioning of the volume. After analyzing the characteristics of local materials in the village, the designers found a large quantity of wooden sticks, stacked around each house. Villagers collect these sticks year-round to fuel their kitchens. So this ordinary material was used in an “extraordinary” way for the cladding.