Fengwu Village, located in Yixian County of Huangshan City, presents a familiar rural condition in contemporary China. Despite its proximity to culturally renowned sites such as Xidi and Hongcun, Fengwu is marked by the absence of preserved heritage architecture and suffers from demographic decline, an aging population, and a lack of cultural amenities. Within this context, IARA’s Rural Memory Museum emerges not as a monument to the past but as a tool for contemporary cultural continuity.
Rural Memory Museum Technical Information
- Architects1-4: IARA
- Location: Fengwu Village, Biyang Town, Yixian County, Huangshan City, China
- Gross Area: 200 m2 | 2.150 Sq. Ft.
- Completion Year: 2023
- Photographs: © Yi Huang
To some extent, it is a ‘new ancestral hall’ for the contemporary rural community.
– IARA Architects
Rural Memory Museum Photographs
Context and Design Intent
The museum forms a key component of the “Fengwu JI” rural revitalization initiative launched in 2023. This program aims to revitalize village life through architectural and cultural interventions that are grounded in the local context. The design begins with a precise historical gesture: the project occupies the site of a former structure, known as Yingfengli, which had gradually vanished over time. What remained was an exposed public square used sporadically for drying clothes and meat, but neglected mainly due to climatic discomfort and spatial ambiguity.
Rather than imposing a new typology, the project reinterprets the function of the lost building. It does so not through mimicry, but by restoring its spatial and social role as a communal anchor. IARA positions the new structure as a kind of contemporary ancestral hall, serving not lineage, but collective memory and shared cultural practice.
Spatial Strategy and Typological Innovation
The museum employs a two-level configuration that articulates distinct, yet complementary, programmatic intentions. The ground level is conceived as a semi-open public space, providing shelter and shade while inviting informal gatherings and community events. This level does not support typical museum functions. Instead, it serves as an accessible civic platform, directly addressing the village’s need for adaptable public infrastructure.
The upper floor accommodates the museum’s more contemplative functions, including exhibition spaces and a small screening room. The elevation of these programs not only protects them from environmental exposure but also creates a spatial inversion of the traditional southern Anhui courtyard typology. Whereas local residential forms often turn inward, the museum opens itself to the surrounding village through an L- or J-shaped configuration that loosely frames a new courtyard space, collaborating with adjacent structures.
This spatial reorientation avoids nostalgic replication of vernacular forms. Instead, it establishes a layered dialogue between the old and the new, the public and the private, memory and activity. The building is not an object in isolation, but a spatial mechanism for reconnecting fragmented elements of the village’s social and architectural fabric.
Material Language and Construction Tactics
Materially, the project draws on the immediate surroundings, both in terms of resources and resonance. The walls are constructed from a mixture of local river sand, lime, and cement, applied with hand-finished techniques to replicate the texture of time-worn surfaces. The intention is not to simulate decay, but to register the slow temporality of rural architecture.
Wooden elements play a central role, particularly in the internal courtyard and the compact “Time Box” screening room. Here, the use of charred wood serves a dual purpose. Functionally, it enhances the material’s resistance to weathering. Symbolically, it references the carbonized surfaces often found in rural structures, which have been shaped over the years by cooking smoke and climatic exposure. This technique, while contemporary in application, acknowledges and extends a vernacular material logic.
The duality of exterior and interior expression is clearly articulated. The outer shell of the building is defined by solid whitewashed walls, maintaining the visual continuity of the village. In contrast, the courtyard-facing surfaces are rendered in light timber and glass, offering tactile warmth and permeability.
Rural Memory Museum Cultural Meaning
At its core, the Rural Memory Museum is not a container for static heritage, but a space in which personal and collective histories can be activated. The curatorial strategy within the Rural Memory Hall embraces this ethos, organizing artifacts donated by villagers into three chronological chapters: Birth, Growth, and Inheritance. This structure constructs a narrative arc from individual life stories, stitching them into a broader cultural tapestry. The museum becomes not a site of consumption but of reflection and identification.
Crucially, the project resists the sterilization standard in rural redevelopment schemes. Before its official completion, the museum was already appropriated by villagers, who hosted two community feasts under the open ground-floor structure. These early uses highlight the building’s ability to serve as more than just an exhibition space. Weddings, funerals, meals, and festivals now take place in a space designed not for spectacle, but for integration.
In this way, the museum offers a model for how architectural interventions can reintroduce vitality into rural contexts without resorting to nostalgia or monumentality. It acknowledges loss, but does not dwell in it. Instead, it enables a contemporary rural life rooted in participation, adaptability, and spatial continuity.
By balancing architectural discipline with social responsiveness, the Rural Memory Museum illustrates the potential of modest yet thoughtful design to serve as a medium of cultural and spatial regeneration.
Rural Memory Museum Plans
Rural Memory Museum Image Gallery
About IARA
IARA is an interdisciplinary architectural practice based in China, focusing on socially engaged design, particularly in rural and community-based contexts. Their work emphasizes the integration of local materials, vernacular traditions, and contemporary spatial strategies to address issues of cultural continuity, public use, and social revitalization. Through modest yet impactful interventions, IARA explores architecture as a means to foster collective memory and community resilience.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Functions: Museum, community gathering space, screening room
- Construction Materials: Local river sand, lime, cement, charred timber, glass, grey tiles
- Design Team: IARA
- Client: Fengwu JI Rural Revitalization Project
