About the project:
Tibetan Art Museum is located in the west of Lhasa City, Tibet Autonomous Region, China. It is reconstructed from the site of the former Lhasa Cement Factory, which was the first cement factory in Tibet that was built as early as 1960. Demolition and retention work of the former cement factory buildings are made to adapt to the new functions of the art museum.
Individual art museum buildings were transformed from the previous cement production facilities. For example, the Central Hall was reconstructed from a cement storage warehouse, a new office building was transformed from the previous burning kiln tail, the Art Bookstore was converted from cylindrical cement slurry tanks, the Art Fairs was transformed from the previous rectification room.
In the transformation process, we faced multiple challenges in the integration of old and new structures. First, the Tibetan Plateau is the highest plateau in the world (average 3,800 m above sea level). The local ecological environment is fragile, the oxygen in the air is thin, making the transportation of building material and construction process very difficult. Therefore, the original structures were retained as much as possible to save materials and to protect the environment. Second, the site was located in a high-intensity earthquake zone. The original Industrial buildings were designed with earlier standards and had very low concrete strength, thus we had to take certain techniques to improve the seismic resistance capacity of the structural components and to reduce the floor vibration acceleration, protecting the collection of art works.
The Central Hall was rebuilt from a former cement plant, which was designed using earlier standards and had low concrete strengths, the seismic resistance capacity does not meet the current code requirements. In the reconstruction process of the Central Hall, the concrete columns and foundations of the original structure were retained, while the columns were seismically reinforced, and new steel roof trusses were added. Original concrete columns were reinforced with mild-steel seismic dampers, greatly enhancing their seismic resistant capacity of the overall structure. This approach ingeniously utilizes the original factory building structure and reduces the transformation cost.
Fig.1 Seismic reinforcement of the concrete columns of the Central Hall
Fig 2. Comparison of the former cement plant and the transformed Central Hall