Jingdezhen’s Imperial Kiln Museum Opens in Vaults of Kiln Brick
Studio Zhu Pei's museum of long brick vaults, built partly from recycled kiln bricks, was completed in 2020 beside the Ming imperial kiln ruins.
The Imperial Kiln Museum in Jingdezhen, designed by Studio Zhu Pei, was completed in 2020 beside the ruins of the kilns that supplied porcelain to the Ming and Qing courts. It is one of the most admired new buildings in China, and it has given the city known as the porcelain capital of the world a museum equal to its history.
Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi province, has made ceramics for some 1,700 years. From the 14th century its imperial kilns produced the blue-and-white wares that were sent to the palace in Beijing and traded across Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Pieces that failed inspection were smashed and buried on the spot, and the excavation of those pits in recent decades has yielded an extraordinary record of what the court ordered.
The museum stands next to the site. It is made of a series of long brick vaults, each different in size, length and curvature, laid side by side like loaves. Their shape is that of the traditional Jingdezhen kiln, a tapering tunnel of brick that had to be rebuilt every few years; the old bricks, saturated with heat, were then reused in the houses of the town. Zhu Pei has built his vaults partly from such recycled kiln bricks, mixed with new ones, using a method close to that of the kiln builders, in which concrete is poured between two skins of brick without scaffolding.
The building is partly sunk into the ground, so that it stays low among the surrounding houses. The entrance level holds a foyer, a bookshop, a café, a tea room and an amphitheatre, and the galleries are below. The ends of the vaults are open or glazed, round skylights recall the smoke holes of the kilns, and five sunken courtyards are named after the elements of porcelain-making: gold, wood, water, fire and earth. One vault is left open to frame the excavated ruins. The architect has said the aim was to recreate the experience of living among kilns and porcelain.
Jingdezhen is not yet on most international itineraries. It is about four hours from Shanghai by train, and it rewards two or three days: besides the museum, there are the old kiln sites, the workshops and markets of Taoxichuan, a ceramics district in converted factories, and hundreds of studios where young potters from across China have settled. It belongs with the places described in OKYTO’s feature on China beyond the big cities.