Project: Maison S Museum
Award: Publicly Accessible Interiors - Civic, 2024
Location: Lishui City, China
Design practice: WIT Design & Research
This atmospheric museum, located in a guesthouse in the ancient Chinese town of Songyang in China’s Zhejiang province, imaginatively showcases the lives of local villagers to tourists.
The Maison S Museum is both a reception hall for a six-bedroom Chinese Minsuku – a type of small guesthouse that has become popular with visitors from urban areas in the country in recent years – as well as a small folk museum.
Open to the public, the museum displays scenes from the traditional day to day life of villagers including cooking, drinking tea, pounding rice, ancestor worship, reading and sleeping, allowing guests a deeper insight into the traditional way of life here than a coventional guesthouse could offer.
Design highlights
The project involved the complete reconstruction of an original timber building on the site, reusing wood from abandoned and disassembled local buildings. The result is an immersive space that seamlessly and organically fits into its village surroundings and mountainous backdrop.
Photo credit: TOPIA & One Thousand Degrees
- DIRECTOR: Zhenhua Luo