Daipu Architects Wins Gold Award at 2023 London Design Awards

The London Design Awards is a global award organized by BETTER FUTURE, which after 16 years of development has become one of the most influential honors in the design world. Covering a wide range of professional categories including architecture, interiors, graphics and product, and with participants on three continents, the London Design Awards celebrate the courage to innovate and recognize excellence in design, as well as broad market recognition. The judging is done by a professional advisory panel of over 180 design experts from all over the world.

BETTER FUTURE is a global independent design promotion organization. Its global community now has 115,000 members. In 2021, its teams recognized more than $472 billion in design projects and raised the profile of more than 1,580 design projects.

With “393 Art Center” (Ningjin County Gongbi painting Art Center), Daipu Architects won the Gold Award for Conceptual Design in the Architectural Design category.

Daipu Architects Wins Gold at 2023 London Design Awards / © Daipu Architects

393 Art Center is located in the county of Chinese Gongbi painting: Ningjin County, Xingtai City, Hebei Province. Before the intervention of Daipu Architects, there were already three buildings of different periods and structural forms on the site, resulting in a discrete spatial relationship of the whole park and there is no well-planned circulation. Therefore, we apply a strategy: introducing the plane form of the palette, integrating the different forms of buildings; not only highlighting the artistic characteristics of the town of Gongbi painting with the palette, but also connecting the circulation of visits to form a very open external image and convergent central courtyard. When completed, it will welcome visitors from all directions to gather here, rejoice under the rain porch and in the square. The undulating concrete curves will continue to inspire new discoveries and feelings in the art center.

original building / © Daipu Architects

The 393 Art Center is equipped with a 600-meter exhibition line length, showing visitors a large number of art works while giving the surrounding villagers richer possibilities for their lives. The new part of the building includes a public library, an academic conference hall, artists’ studios, a café and an art store, allowing local and foreign visitors to enjoy the architectural space and art while organizing a variety of activities, including cultural salons, art education, and public reading.

Daipu Architects visited and researched the townships, talked with villagers and Gongbi painting artists, sorted out the needs of the local industry-related people and the neighboring villagers, and also discussed the local government’s vision. We hope that the 393 Art Center will not only show the bright prospects of the development of the local Gongbi painting industry since the reform and opening-up, but also demonstrate the long history and vivid vitality of the creation of Gongbi painting.