Innovative Lab of Architecture & Art / CLAB
Text description provided by the architects. The INNOVATIVE LAB of ARCHITECTURE & ART is CLAB’s new studio in Qionglai, Chengdu City, and it is a space built and operated by architects, artists, scientific research institute, and rural craftsmen. Its name reveals three, at least, experimental “spirits”: the experiment of construction, the experiment of rural reform movement, and the innovation experiment of social relations.
This space is constructed by traditional material rammed earth. A scientific research team come from Chinese University of Hong Kong provided mature technical support for the rammed earth construction of this project, which significantly improved the technical limit of traditional rammed earth, so that it can be used in the earthquake of eight-degree fortification areas, can be used as structure (not maintenance system). This will also improve the living security in rural areas.
This technology insists the handmaking of rammed earth so as to adapt to the way of social work in the countryside and be accepted and spread by the vast rural areas of China. The whole construction process is also a cultivate scheme for modern rammed earth artisans. Local artisans will take this technic returning to their homeland, build their home by hands, considering the reality of undeveloped rural society, and bring modern meaning into the historical narrative.
Upon completion of the laboratory, we will operate the residence of architects and artists to nurture contemporary knowledge and rural nature mutually and to experiment with a possible innovative social relationship. This is the significance of the practice of the INNOVATIVE LAB of ARCHITECTURE & ART.
