The Ui ART Center is located on the shores of Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou and is the first internationally renowned art center with life as its core theme. The opening of Ui ART Center to the public was announced through a grand international contemporary art exhibition.
The pure white architectural space implies an understanding of life as the core theme. The pure, white, and spacious environment provides viewers with a tranquil and profound dimension for contemplation. In the lighting design, the team avoided common downlights and instead adopted the approach of illuminating the ceiling to achieve soft and diffused light that fills the entire space. Large-scale wall washing is used to highlight the exhibited artworks and introductions at the entrance, accentuating the spatial characteristics and guiding the visual flow.
The public circulation spaces leading to various exhibition halls continue the consistent design approach. Through extensive wall washing and the high reflectivity of white walls, a uniform and bright visual space is achieved without the need for dense downlights.
Suspended artworks in the public spaces are composed of colorful silk threads, featuring graceful and gentle forms. They are illuminated through diffused light, adding a touch of brightness to the pure white space.
The light and delicate silk threads bathed in serene and gentle lighting create a soothing and introspective atmosphere, guiding the audience to contemplate the theme of life.
In the main exhibition hall, a large area of adjustable luminous ceiling provides a uniformly high-brightness environment that meets exhibition requirements. Additionally, a track lighting system embedded within the framework highlights the exhibited artworks. Notably, the skylight in the center of the exhibition hall was carefully designed to avoid direct sunlight on the paintings. The design team conducted a precise natural light simulation analysis to determine the height and spacing of the “eye” devices, ensuring that direct sunlight does not fall on the walls throughout the year.
The lighting design of Exhibition Hall 2 integrates exhibition and ambient lighting, creating a pure and minimalist artistic space through a customized integrated track system.
The elevator hall features an irregularly arranged ceiling design, and the soft boundary of the gypsum lights aligns with the artistic core of the art center, emphasizing the theme of life.
The design style is continued in the café, where even and soft lighting diffuses on the walls and ceiling, complementing the elegant dark green seats to create a unique and artistic space.
The multifunctional hall also follows a free and casual approach in its ceiling arrangement and features a continuous and soft linear lighting system.
In the children’s creation studio, while adhering to the clean and pure style, the design also takes into account the need for flexible layouts.
Since its opening, the art center has hosted several major exhibitions. The first exhibition, titled “All Things in Their Time”, explored the theme of “life” from the perspective of the human community, bringing together over a hundred original masterpieces of contemporaneous art from around the world to present the overall evolution of contemporary art. The second exhibition, a collaboration between Ui ART Center and Sipa China, presented a grand immersive light and shadow exhibition themed around the four seasons of Paul Cézanne, the “father of modern art”, using digital technology to recreate the atmosphere of 19th-century Provence in southern France.
