Chang’an Academy and Xi’an Public Library is a 70,016.90-square-meter cultural complex on the Ba River in Xi’an, where a broad civic roofscape frames a library interior organized around reading, circulation, informal gathering, and daylight.
Chang’an Academy and Xi’an Public Library Technical Information
- ArchitectsChina Northwest Architectural Design and Research Institute
- LocationChanba Ecological Area, Xi’an, China
- Gross Area70,016.90 m2 | 753,660 Sq. Ft.
- Project Year2024
- Photographs© Studio Ten
The vitality of cultural architecture lies not in scale alone, but in its capacity to sustain genuine everyday connections between people and the city.
– Ming Dang
Riverside Form and Civic Presence
Located on the west bank of the Ba River in Xi’an’s Chanba Ecological Area, Chang’an Academy occupies a transitional condition between river landscape, broad transport infrastructure, new residential development, and the Olympic Sports Center across the water. Its setting is not a historic urban fabric but an expanding metropolitan edge, where large cultural buildings are often asked to establish public identity before an established street life has fully formed. The project addresses this condition through a low, extended profile that traces the waterfront rather than rising above it as a compact object.
Two overlapping roof planes form the building’s principal architectural expression. Their shallow curves dip toward the center and lift at the corners into pointed eaves, translating familiar Chinese roof silhouettes into a continuous metallic surface without reproducing historic construction details. Deep overhangs shade the glazed facade, while closely spaced vertical fins give the curtain wall a striated texture. At a distance, the fins suggest the compressed edges of pages, linking the facade to the library program while also reducing the visual scale of the expansive glazing.
Reworking the Atrium at Human Scale
The central atrium avoids functioning solely as a ceremonial void. Reading counters, reception desks, planted edges, seating zones, and intermediate terraces occupy its perimeter and lower levels, turning circulation space into a shared interior landscape. Rather than treating the large volume as an empty expression of institutional scale, the interior distributes reasons to stop within it. These insertions give the atrium a social density that is often absent from large civic halls designed primarily for visual impact.
The stair sequence is central to this recalibration. By redirecting vertical circulation through the reception and reading areas before visitors ascend, the stair operates as an orienting device rather than an isolated route between floors. A spiral stair rises through the atrium as a visible spatial anchor, while broader stepped routes connect public levels more gradually. Offset balcony edges produce overlapping oval and curved apertures instead of a regular stacked void, allowing sightlines, daylight, and glimpses of activity to move between levels without sacrificing the atrium’s vertical scale.
Material, Light, and Spatial Legibility
The material palette manages the tension between a large public interior and the more intimate demands of reading and study. Wood-grain metal panels line soffits, balcony undersides, counters, and selected walls, providing the visual association of timber while responding to fire-safety, durability, and maintenance requirements. Their use is pragmatic as much as atmospheric: the finish introduces a warmer register into spaces otherwise defined by curtain walls, white columns, and broad pale surfaces.
Cream-colored balustrades, fluted white service volumes, terrazzo floors, and timber-toned linings establish a limited set of legible elements. Darker terrazzo islands mark seating areas within the lighter circulation floor, clarifying occupation without relying on partitions. Above, a triangulated ceiling grid follows the warped geometry of the roof, extending the exterior’s curved formal logic into the interior. Daylight enters through the full-height facade and is filtered by its vertical mullions, casting shifting bands across counters, floors, and terraces.
Hybrid Public Programs and Informal Use
The library is organized as a connected field of programs rather than a sequence of sealed rooms. Reading halls, facade counters, study terraces, educational settings, exhibition-oriented public areas, and circulation platforms remain visually and physically related through the atrium. This arrangement recognizes that contemporary library use includes concentrated study, short visits, social exchange, and temporary occupation. Curved counters along the glazed perimeter provide individual workspaces with river views, while oval reading platforms and planted balconies offer more collective settings.
A sunken stepped amphitheater broadens the role of the interior as civic infrastructure. Its timber steps can support lectures and small public events, but their everyday value lies equally in informal seating, waiting, conversation, and rest. Loose cushions in muted red, lilac, orange, cream, and gray interrupt the restrained interior palette and make the stepped surface more readily inhabitable. By placing this forum within the wider circulation field, the project allows public activity to remain visible and connected to reading spaces, rather than confining collective use to a separate auditorium.
About HONG Designworks
HONG Designworks is one of China’s largest design firms. Founded in 2002 by Zhiyong Fan and Ming Dang, the practice follows a human-centered, value-driven, and sustainability-led approach, creating spaces with warmth, enduring relevance, and lasting vitality.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Lead designer: Zhao Yuanchao, National Engineering Survey and Design Master and Chief Architect of China Northwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd.
- Architectural design: China Northwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd., Urban & Architectural Design Research Center.
- Interior design: HONG Designworks, MINGRI FORMA Design Research; China Northwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd., Urban & Architectural Design Research Center.
- Interior design team, public areas: Ming Dang, Dai Chengxu, Xie Xu, Li Jiaxiang, and Gao Lingqi.
- Interior design team, reading rooms: Hao Ying and Zheng Long.
- Photography: Studio Ten, Tan Xiao.
- Drawings: HONG Designworks.
