Project Overview

This cultural renovation project revitalizes a historic building within Rui’an’s Yuhai Historical and Cultural Block, transforming it into an immersive experience centre that tells the story of the Yongjia School—an influential Confucian philosophical tradition. By respecting its protected architectural structure while introducing advanced digital interfaces and layered exhibition design, the project functions as both a gateway to heritage and a model for merging ancient thought with modern narrative techniques.

Project Commissioner

Rui'an Mingcheng Construction Investment Co., Ltd

Project Creator

Rui'an Media Group Limited

Team

Ying Zhou, Wei Chen, Siwei Huang, Jun Xu, Qinqin Cai, Zihao Huang

Project Brief

The design breathes new life into a municipal-level cultural relic, located at a key entrance to a historic district. It interprets the rich legacy of a thousand-year-old philosophical school through multi-sensory exhibitions, digital overlays, and interactive storytelling.

The project takes the visitor on a curated journey through time, turning abstract ideals into tangible experiences. Preserving original spatial forms while integrating glass walls, OLED screens, and animated visuals, the design avoids heavy-handed renovation in favour of respectful innovation, making the site accessible, enlightening, and emotionally engaging.

Project Innovation/Need

The project introduces a “virtual-real interface” within a protected historic building, combining full-glass curtain walls and transparent OLED screens to present historical paintings and classical literature in a spatially expansive way.

Unlike traditional museum settings, the digital integration overlays philosophical content atop real architectural textures, breaking down the limitations of space and enabling immersive storytelling without structural intrusion. Modular construction methods and reversible material strategies also set new benchmarks for how historic preservation can embrace change without sacrificing integrity.

Design Challenge

The main challenge was striking a delicate balance between cultural relic preservation and contemporary exhibition needs. The historic site required minimal intervention, yet the goal was to introduce immersive technologies and flexible visitor flow.

Removing select wooden partitions, preserving key beams, and creating a full-circuit route without compromising authenticity demanded architectural sensitivity and spatial ingenuity. Additionally, translating philosophical ideas into interactive, emotionally resonant installations required interdisciplinary collaboration between curators, designers, and digital media specialists.

Sustainability

Sustainability was embedded holistically through a “low-intervention, recyclable, and adaptive” design model. Locally renewable materials like bamboo and wood were used, along with modular assembly to ensure reversibility and material reuse.

Passive lighting and ventilation strategies were combined with intelligent LED controls to meet conservation needs while minimising energy use. Lightweight digital exhibits reduced material consumption and construction waste. A full lifecycle low-carbon philosophy guided not only construction but ongoing operations, positioning the site as a living example of ecological and cultural sustainability.

Interior Design - International Public or Institutional

This award celebrates innovative and creative building interiors with consideration given to space creation and planning, furnishings, finishes and aesthetic presentation. Consideration also given to space allocation, traffic flow, building services, lighting, fixtures, flooring, colours, furnishings and surface finishes.
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