At 7 o'clock in the evening, at No. 68 Cao Zhuangyuan Street, Nanming District, an ancient building combining Chinese and Western is brightly lit, and architect Yue Jian and his team are working here.
The ancient building is Dai Yunshan Villa, which has a history of nearly 100 years, and after the vicissitudes of time, it has now become the cultural and artistic center of Dai Mansion.
Who is Dai Yunshan? She is a wealthy businessman in the provincial capital, known as "Nan Million", that is, "the millionaire in the south of the provincial city." The origin of this name is not only because its commercial headquarters is located on Zhonghua South Road, but also because its mansion was built in the South Gate New Market. Dai's mansion was called "Dai Mansion" at that time, that is, "Dai Yunshan Villa".
Night view of Dai Mansion.
The construction time of Dai Mansion is about the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, from the architectural style, its internal structure belongs to the Chinese pattern, and the cloister, arch and glass stained windows on each floor have obvious European architectural characteristics, and the whole belongs to the product of the combination of Chinese and Western styles. There are several similar buildings in Guiyang, such as the former residence of Wang Boqun, Mao Guangxiang Mansion, etc., which are the examples of modern architecture in Guiyang.
With the development and change of the city, the high-rise building is gradually hidden in the high walls of concrete. In 2015, Dai Yunshan Villa was listed as the seventh batch of "cultural relics protection units" in Guiyang City, which attracted extensive attention from provincial and municipal governments at all levels, cultural relics protection institutions, folk cultural relics restoration teams, and revitalization teams.
Architect Yue Jian, who is in charge of the restoration project of the Dai Mansion, recalls the first time he saw the building: "The doors and windows of the house are rotten, the stained glass is covered with dust, and the walls are whitewashed and peeled off...... It was as if he had been tortured. ”
Today, the Dai Mansion has become a cultural and artistic center, and the audience comes to see the exhibition.
Yue Jian is an active promoter of the protection of urban and rural heritage in Guizhou, and in recent years, he has organized a team to restore and rescue rural heritage in Anshun Tunpu, Guiyang Xiangzhigou and other places. After learning about the history of Dai Mansion, he came up with the idea of restoring the building, and Dai Yunshan Villa also became the first municipal cultural relics in Guiyang City to be restored by social forces.
Repairing the old as before, in order to preserve its truth, is the concept that Yuejian has always adhered to. When people walk into the current Dai Mansion, they will find that although the wall gives people a mottled feeling, it does not make people feel decayed, but is full of heavy vitality.
The seemingly mottled walls are full of life.
More than just repairing. In Yue Jian's view, old buildings not only need to be protected, but also connected to the present. For a celebrity mansion with a history of 100 years, how to let people walk in, feel and experience is a problem he has been thinking about.
In 2019, Yue Jian held three exhibitions at Dai Yunshan's former residence, and for the first time, with the theme of "Status and Originality" of Dai Mansion, the documentary photographs of three photographers "Discovery, Protection, Restoration, and Revitalization" showed the power of folk restoration, allowing the audience to understand the past and present life of the building.
In 2020, the theme of the second exhibition was "Dai Mansion and the Sense of Place", conveying the awareness and value of urban architectural heritage protection. He was impressed by the fact that on the day of the opening, it was drizzling, and the invited musicians stood in the middle of the courtyard to sing, with assistants holding umbrellas for them, while the audience ran to the corridors on the second and third floors to escape the rain. As the melody flowed slowly, they leaned over to listen. At that moment, the dialogue between architecture and music, and the environment is full of poetry.
During the second exhibition, the audience took shelter and enjoyed the rain in the Dai Mansion.
"The arcade building extends from the inside out, so when it rains, people don't need to hide from the rain indoors, but can watch the rain in the corridors. There is a lot of rain in Guiyang, and at this time, the weather and the building are no longer a wall, but can talk to each other. This vignette shows the adaptability of the architectural characteristics of Dai Yunshan's Mansion to Guiyang's climate.
At present, the ongoing exhibition "The Elephant of Emptiness" also continues Yue Jian's idea, in which he echoes modernist paintings and architecture, and the bold colors on the paper collide with the colors of the glass windows, allowing the audience to imagine how people felt about beauty a hundred years ago, and compare it with their own understanding of beauty today.
From December 2, 2023 to January 15, 2024, the "Images of Emptiness" theme art exhibition awaits the audience to come and have a dialogue.
In Yue Jian's view, if you want to explore more possibilities of old buildings, you must first understand the functions it once played. In the past, Dai Mansion was a daily residence, a kindergarten, a supply and marketing cooperative, a knitting factory dormitory, a U.S. military club in Guiyang, and an office space...... Therefore, it can be used as an exhibition hall, restaurant, café, training base, library, office, etc., both with historical roots and open space.
How to integrate urban monuments into modern life? It is necessary not only to protect and revitalize them in their original form, but also to let them continue to play a role in urban development and residents' lives, which has become a deep-seated issue that many cities in China are constantly facing in the protection of cultural relics.
However, in the process of revitalization, the first principle is to retain restraint and repair. "We expect operators to respect the old building and not be completely profit-oriented. "Yue Jian has his own insistence.
Guizhou Daily Tianyan News reporter Yuan Liqian
Edited by Zeng Shuhui
Second instance Wang Tian
Third Instance Xu Shaoting