The Southern Song Imperial City is located at the foot of Phoenix Mountain in Hangzhou. After Emperor Gaozong Zhao Gou made Hangzhou his capital, he built a palace and forbidden garden on the site of the Northern Song Dynasty's state office, creating a unique landscape garden imperial city with artificial mountains, flying springs, pavilions, and towers, all incredibly beautiful. Over the centuries, the Southern Song Imperial City has endured fires, abandonment, and ground surface changes, until it was finally abandoned and disappeared, becoming an underground relic. The main palace part of the site is buried about 1.5 to 3 meters underground. The dense distribution of buildings within the imperial city, along with many illegal constructions, has had a certain impact on the site. Achieving a balance between site protection and display is the design challenge.
IAPA, in addition to undertaking commercial project design, is also actively involved in the protection and display of ancient sites, old city renovation, and regional cultural construction research. The Southern Song Museum National Heritage Park is another world-attention-grabbing heritage park project designed by IAPA in 2008 after the completion of the Xi'an Daming Palace and Hangzhou Liangzhu National Heritage Park. IAPA proposed the concept of 'a living museum,' and the plan also provides a new approach for the coordination and balance of large-scale site protection in China, urban renewal, and public participation, coexistence and development, which is bound to spark a new round of discussion. At the same time, the plan also won the award for the Southern Song Museum Conceptual Planning and Design Competition.
Floating Palace
The museum's top floor contrasts the restoration of important palaces with the underground ruins, creating a four-dimensional exhibition space that traverses space and time. Coupled with the lush trees in the courtyard and the surrounding mountains that serve as a backdrop, a vivid landscape of a royal city unfolds before the eyes.
The middle layer, as a floating volume, houses significant artifacts unearthed from the ruins. The interior's simple and flexible exhibition spaces can employ a variety of multimedia methods to simulate the ruins and the royal city in multiple dimensions, bringing an otherworldly sensory experience through advanced equipment.
The underground ruins layer is sheltered by the museum, avoiding exposure to the ground. The elevated open exhibition space allows people to closely experience the system and scale of the original site.
We have always been committed to integrating modern architectural elements into this Southern Song Dynasty site park, which is imbued with historical vicissitudes.
In the center of the royal city, surrounded by a small village and city walls, a north-south axis runs through it. To protect the important palace ruins, the design shapes the landscape and ground markers according to the terrain, placing three floating museum volumes above the ruins and reconstructing the magnificent palace scene on top.
These three museum volumes, located in the center of the royal city, draw inspiration from traditional palace gate blocks. They have been deconstructed, evolved, translated, and recombined, ultimately forming three large floating sky courtyards above the ruins. They form two important axes within the royal city, and the visitor experience flow line organically connects these three volumes.
The museum also has two building systems to provide the greatest adaptability. The first is the columns above the ruins, which do not cause any damage and can be moved according to the specific ruins. The second is the internal steel grid system, which can be changed according to specific exhibition needs.
