UI Center

Project Name: UI Center；
Location: Intersection of Heping Avenue and Xinsheng Road, Wuchang District, Wuhan, Hubei Province；
Design Company: Yu Studio；
Chief Designer: Yu Zhao；
Assistant Designer:Lv Zhen,Wang Yue，Feng Jin；
Client Name: Wuhan United Investments and Properties Co., Ltd.
Photographer: Wang Ting； "I want that the whole space is filled with a pleasant sound. The space and sound have a close relationship but are separate each other." - Yu Zhao；
Like a floating city, Wuhan floats on the surface of rivers and lakes. The project design was inspired by the unique water culture of Wuhan. Based on "water", the designer invited his friend Ouge, a musician, to create a piece of unique music for this space, and integrated the sound art into space expression here.
"Sound and space constitute the framework of the design concept. Sound is integrated into the context of contemporary art and sound tracks are interwoven and mixed invisibly in the space, so that visitors walk as if in a sound field, interacting with the art installations in the space and motivating the emotions of the whole space.
Visitors start their tour with a tea space, where the sound of water droplets activates visitors’ auditory system. Then they enter a high corridor, which provides a spatial atmosphere of temples for instantly silencing people.
In the corridor, the light and the sky colour mix mutually, and the sound of water droplets is high sometimes and low sometimes. The sound source is located in the roof of the second floor just above the spiral staircase. Therefore, the guidance of the tour route is beyond ordinary visual guidance, but a process of "seeking for a sound source".
Listening to the sound whiling going upstairs from the corridor, visitors can also "view" the stairs in the box, the bronze mirror on the floor, and the hanging stone which constitute a complete art installation with a special art environment. The light darkens here, and the reflection in the mirror looks like the surface of a pool of water, attracting people to stop and feel their blurred environment around. The sound of water droplets does not correspond to the real dropping water, but to the art stone hanging from above. So far, illusion and reality coexist, and sound and space are integrated.
The stairs outside the door, the bamboo forest out of the window, the fire in the stove, the musical instrument under the flower, the water droplets in the air...are reflected in the water. The water on the first floor statically expresses a kind of extreme quiet, while that on the second floor emphasizes the sense of mobility of the space.
The second floor is connected with the first floor. Those regular windows and walls separate the space into a series of continuous pictures, which depict the warm, delicate and romantic sceneries of spring, river, flower, moon and night in the traditional Chinese style.
"When a building stays, the river doesn't stop flowing." In Wuhan, Qingchuan Pavilion and Yellow Crane Tower stand beside the river, and the river flows constantly all day and night. In UI Center, an art installation that combines a stable building with unstable mirror images through which the suspension bridge passes. The instability of the suspension bridge and the swinging of the perforating copper give people a kind of dreamlike feeling.