During all the years of its stone extraction, Yingliang Stone Group has discovered numerous fossils and decided to turn its headquarters into a museum narrating their history and the science behind fossil research. There were two major challenges during the renovation process. The first was the conflict between private headquarters and a public museum, and the second the lack of direct sunlight entering the atrium space. The addition of museum space would reduce the amount of light in the office space even more. The archaic rock was first discovered in the crystalised base inside the landmass and the crystalloids became as they are today after a long period of high temperature and pressure, mixing and build-up. The original form of the stone, its crystal structure, brings a new architectural language and we introduced three intersected crystalloids into the atrium space. The quadrangular pyramid lightwell extends from the building's roof to the first-floor ceiling, bringing light into the first-floor museum atrium; the second-floor exhibition space and the rest of the office space are lit by the remaining portion of the building's skylight as well as the reflected light bouncing off the tilted outer-surface of the lightwell. Around the vertical crystalloids are horizontal ones that are still growing, eventually inserting forms into the fossil display rooms. The layout of the rooms was determined by the timeframe and storyline. The horizontal crystalloids also introduce sunlight into the interior space, along their growing direction, and all the tilted crystalloids interweave sunlight and exhibition spaces. The finalised renovation has the form of a penetrated Cartesian grid, with the orthogonal system of columns and beams transformed into illuminated but mysterious triangulated spaces. As the heavy mass floats upwards, the sense of anti-gravity places visitors in an unknown space, seemingly straight out of a sci-fi film. The interior and exterior atrium spaces were split between museum and office spaces, while the interior of the museum has become a complicated space of endlessly growing crystals. The archaic stones crystallise to form different architectural spaces while communicating with them as exhibits crossing time and space. There is no other decoration in the exhibition space. The only element expressing the aeons of the deposit is a tiled wall. This simplicity gives visitors a prepositional spatial, dimensional and sunlit experience. The walls are not only the boundaries between different functions but have also been re-formed into calm and cold, cave-like environments, making the geological fossils look even older. The inner wall of the crystalloid is also the ceiling of the museum. The outside of the wall reflects the office building while also separating the private and public spaces.
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