Songzhuang Z Museum | © Jonathan Leijonhufvud Located in the remote mountainous terrain of Zhejiang Province, The Quartet: Songzhuang Z Museum presents a compelling study of architectural adaptation, contradiction, and transformation. Situated in Songzhuang, a 600-year-old village that remained largely untouched by modernization until recent years, the project by TEAM_BLDG offers an architectural response that neither retreats into nostalgia nor imposes a foreign image. Instead, it constructs a spatial and material dialectic, acknowledging incongruity, emphasizing contrast, and subtly embedding itself into the evolving cultural landscape. The Quartet: Songzhuang Z Museum Technical Information Architects1-6: TEAM_BLDG Location: Songzhuang Village, Songyang County, Zhejiang Province, China Area: 472 m2 | 5,080 Sq. Ft. Project Year: 2024 – 2025 Photographs7: © Jonathan Leijonhufvud Better to stand out than to disappear. – TEAM_BLDG Architects The Quartet: Songzhuang Z Museum Photographs © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud © Jonathan Leijonhufvud Reframing the Village Artifact The project begins with a conflict: a 1990s brick-concrete residence towering awkwardly over the village’s low-slung, contiguous rammed-earth structures. Its scale and materiality severed it from the surrounding context, and it was long deemed a misfit within the village’s traditional fabric. Yet rather than camouflage its presence, the architects embraced its dissonance as a narrative condition. Guided by the client’s directive to amplify, rather than suppress, the building’s incongruity, TEAM_BLDG approached the structure not as a problem to resolve but as a site of architectural inquiry. The question was not how to erase the past intervention but how to recalibrate it into a new typology: the rural museum. In doing so, the firm leveraged the tension between the old and new, not as a binary opposition but as an opportunity for mediation. From Monolith to Quartet The building’s spatial transformation unfolds through a deconstructive logic. The formerly monolithic mass was subdivided into four distinct volumes, a gesture that echoes the scale and fragmented rhythms of the surrounding village dwellings. Interstitial courtyards separate and unite these volumes, allowing light, air, and spatial rhythm to intervene in the once-heavy structure. The design’s vertical core is a newly inserted light well. This atrium spans the height of the building, acting as a conduit for natural light while simultaneously connecting the interior’s horizontal strata. Circulation is organized around this vertical void, allowing for a fluid visitor experience that maintains visual continuity between floors. Each level wraps around the central shaft, reinforcing a sense of openness and transparency that contrasts with the building’s original opacity. Visitors enter through an adjacent, preserved rammed-earth house that has been minimally modified to serve as a “prologue” space, a deliberate moment of compression and quietude before ascending into the brighter, open volumes of the main structure. This spatial sequencing, dark to light, low to high, becomes a sensory transition that enhances the visitor’s perceptual engagement with the museum’s content and context. Weaving Lightness into Mass The project’s defining material intervention is its façade, reconceived as a woven skin inspired by the techniques and metaphors of textile making. TEAM_BLDG wrapped the structure in a finely spaced lattice of aluminum square tubes, painted red on three sides and white on one. The resulting grid creates a dynamic interplay of light, shadow, and chromatic variation, responding to the shifting sun and weather conditions. The design team intentionally avoided a uniform application. Instead, they introduced variations in spacing and density, especially across different levels and orientations. The upper portions of the façade are denser, while the lower remain more open, modulating both visibility and porosity. On the terrace, the façade becomes multidirectional, layering dimensional complexity and deepening the woven metaphor. In bright sunlight, the façade takes on a soft pinkish hue; in overcast or snowy conditions, it becomes a subdued white veil. This chromatic fluidity imparts a temporal quality to the structure, each visit offering a subtly different impression of the building’s mood and presence. The weaving principle is further extended through custom interior furniture, constructed with woven red straps over slender steel frames, echoing the façade’s tectonic logic and material language. Songzhuang Z Museum: Mediation Through Architecture Rather than asserting itself as an icon or retreating into contextual mimicry, the Z Museum mediates between eras, materials, and scales. Its relationship with the village is neither submissive nor dominating; instead, it engages in a form of spatial dialogue. Reconfigured windows frame specific views of the surrounding village, allowing exterior scenes to interact with interior exhibitions. On the third floor, large apertures in the stairwell wall transform the space into a semi-outdoor condition, encouraging visual and behavioral connections with the outside world. The rooftop terrace offers a final moment of release: an unprogrammed panoramic platform where boundaries dissolve, and visitors are immersed in the landscape. The architecture recedes, allowing elevation changes and open material transitions to a gently structured experience without overt control. In an architectural climate often dominated by formal spectacle or overbearing contextualism, The Quartet – Songzhuang Z Museum proposes a third way, rooted in spatial logic, material clarity, and conceptual subtlety. It neither replicates tradition nor denies its presence. Instead, it proposes a weaving of time, space, and perception, where architecture becomes an active thread in the evolving cultural fabric of rural China. The Quartet: Songzhuang Z Museum Plans Level 1 | © TEAM_BLDG Level 2 | © TEAM_BLDG Level 3 | © TEAM_BLDG Roof Plan | © TEAM_BLDG Section | © TEAM_BLDG The Quartet: Songzhuang Z Museum Image Gallery About TEAM_BLDG Design Team: Xiao Lei, Deng Caiyi, Shen Ruijie Structural Design: GongHe Architecture Design Group Co., Ltd. Custom Furniture & Lighting Design: TEAM_BLDG Visual Identity Design (VI): TEAM_BLDG Client / Operator: Mountain Creations (山风大美) Curatorial Team: CSC Communis Photography Assistant: Wai Wai Altitude: Approximately 400 meters above sea level

Songzhuang Z Museum / TEAM BLDGSave this picture!© Jonathan LeijonhufvudMuseum•Lishui, China Architects: TEAM BLDG Area Area of this architecture project Area:  472 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2025 Photographs Photographs:Jonathan Leijonhufvud Lead Architect: Xiao Lei More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! The Quartet – Songzhuang Z Museum - Located in Songzhuang Village, Songyang County, Zhejiang Province, the Z Museum sits over 400 meters above sea level, nestled deep within the mountains. With its winding roads and narrow paths, arriving here for the first time feels like stepping into a modern-day version of the "Peach Blossom Spring". It is said that prior to 2017, this was a place even most locals of Songyang had never visited—or even heard of. As a result, the village has managed to preserve much of its original character, including its traditional housing and historical spatial fabric. In early 2024, TEAM_BLDG was invited to undertake a project in this 600-year-old village: to transform a brick-and-concrete residential house built in the 1990s into Z MUSEUM – the first contemporary rural art museum in China dedicated to the theme of weaving.Save this picture!Better to Stand Out than to Disappear - The original architecture stands in a prominent location within the village—its scale and material starkly contrast with the surrounding low, continuous rows of traditional rammed-earth houses. Having long been uninhabited, the building had been considered for renovation on multiple occasions. It wasn't until the current operator, Mountain Creations, proposed transforming it into the Z Museum that a clear vision began to take shape. From the outset, the operator conveyed a definitive design direction to TEAM_BLDG: since the building's incongruity with the village context was an established fact, instead of concealing or diminishing it, why not enhance this contrast in a way that is memorable? At the same time, this contrast should be appropriate and graceful—resonating both with the spirit of an art museum and with the character of the village itself.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!A Quartet and a Color-Shifting Skin - Faced with the dense and rigid façade of the original structure, the design began with a deconstructive approach. Drawing on the scale and spatial rhythm of the surrounding old houses, the building was vertically divided into four volumes from the inside out, with inner courtyards inserted in between. These four volumes were then interconnected vertically and horizontally. Varying rooftop terraces and semi-transparent shading canopies were introduced, generating a dynamic composition of staggered heights—what the architects describe as a "quartet" of forms.Save this picture!To visually "lighten" the mass of the original building, the architects took inspiration from traditional textile weaving. Aluminum square tubes measuring 20mm x 40mm were painted red on three sides and white on one, then arranged into a fine lattice that wraps the entire façade. Structural elements fixed to the façade act like the shuttles of a loom, guiding the interplay of "warp" and "weft," and weaving strands of dual-colored "yarn" into the building's skin. The result is a mass that feels both delicate and diaphanous.Concerned that the aluminum lattice might appear too rational and mechanical, the design team refined the arrangement by varying the spacing of the slats. The gaps between the tubes are intentionally irregular, and the upper and lower sections are treated differently—with denser patterns above and more open ones below. Particularly on the terrace levels, the lattice introduces multidimensional interweaving, further amplifying the sense of "woven skin."Save this picture!In the early morning, as sunlight begins to filter into the mountain village, light and shadow begin to "weave" across the façade. Thanks to the red-and-white orientation of the aluminum slats, the building takes on subtle and ever-shifting hues throughout the day. This means that each visit to the Z Museum may offer a distinct impression: on bright, sunny afternoons, it may appear as a translucent pink volume; on rainy or snowy days, it becomes a serene, white monolith.Save this picture!Ascending Around a Shaft of Light - In order to give full focus to the artworks, the architects intentionally minimized additive interior design interventions, instead prioritizing the clarity of circulation and the relationship between interior and exterior spaces. The journey begins in the adjacent rammed-earth structure, where a "prologue hall" has been inserted—a quiet, dimly lit space. Aside from red-painted steel cladding added to the window frames and a traditional "tiger window," the room largely preserves the original appearance of the old house. By contrasting this subdued spatial atmosphere with the contemporary interior of the main building, visitors undergo a sensory transition before entering the main exhibition areas.Save this picture!A new skylight was introduced by carving out a vertical atrium—a "light well"—that spans all three levels of the main structure. This shaft allows natural light and ambient warmth to penetrate deep into the interior, while also visually and physically connecting the horizontal spaces on each floor. Exhibition halls on each level are arranged around this central void, allowing visitors to glimpse others moving through the museum from different vantage points.Save this picture!Original window openings were reconfigured in response to the surrounding landscape. This strategy of "secondary framing" allows curated views of the village to dialogue with the artworks on display, subtly bridging the museum interior with the rural context. Meanwhile, large new openings were carved into the stairwell's exterior wall, transforming the third floor into a semi-outdoor space—visually and experientially reinforcing the museum's relationship with the village. Upon reaching the rooftop terrace, visitors are offered an unobstructed panoramic view of Songzhuang Village. The uniform wall and ground materials, along with the absence of deliberate functional zoning, only minimally guide people's behavior through varying elevations, allowing visitors here to fully experience nature and relaxation. Save this picture!Notably, the architects also designed a custom "LOOM" furniture series for the museum's café and shop, inspired by the forms of traditional looms. Constructed with 20×20mm square steel tubes as frames, each piece is wrapped and tensioned with 20mm-wide custom red woven straps to create both horizontal and angled surfaces. The spacing of these woven elements echoes the façade's lattice system, extending the woven "thread" motif from exterior to interior.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less Project locationAddress:Lishui, ChinaLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this office Published on May 20, 2025Cite: "Songzhuang Z Museum / TEAM BLDG" 20 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030268/the-quartet-songzhuang-z-museum-team-bldg&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream