Ningbo History Museum

The museum, designed by a Chinese practice, rises from a flat new district like a cut mountain. It holds the memory of the many villages cleared to make way for the new city.

Its walls are built in wapan, a local technique of stacking reclaimed bricks and tiles in mixed layers, long used to rebuild quickly after storms. Millions of pieces salvaged from the demolished villages, some centuries old, went into the facades, carrying fragments of the old landscape into the new building.

Other walls are cast in concrete with bamboo formwork, which leaves the grain of the bamboo on the surface. The two textures, one gathered from the past and one shaped by a common local plant, give the building its rough, living skin.

Inside, the museum unfolds like a walk through a landscape, with caves, valleys and openings that frame the sky.