Gaoshi Stone Showroom高时石材展厅

Designed for the Gaoshi Group in Shuitou, Fujian, the Gaoshi Stone Showroom is a corporate industry museum that brings exhibition, reception and museum functions into a single minimalist megastructure. Shortlisted at the World Architecture Festival 2026 in Future Projects – Culture under the name Stone Library Museum, it treats stone not as a finish but as the substance of space.

The design starts from one question: what if the skin were a place? Intact rough stone blocks measuring 2.4 × 2.4 × 4 m are used as spatial units rather than cladding. Their depth is a human dimension: stepping into the gaps between them, visitors stand inside the thickness of the façade, where envelope and interior become one. Through the repetition, displacement and cantilevering of these blocks, the building gains a grandeur that is heavy but not clumsy, eschewing commercial gimmicks in favour of quiet dignity. The façade itself becomes the exhibition space for the stone product.

Inside, the programme follows the weight of the material. Large pieces stay on the ground floor, where a 6 m-high hall shows stone craft, furniture and classical sculpture, a screening room tells the journey from quarry to client, and a double-height Stone Slab Library displays the full range of slabs for clients to choose on site, served by its own loading entrance. A café and shop sit alongside. Upstairs, smaller galleries, each lit by a skylight and linked by bridges, include a meditation room and a 1:1 showroom of stone interiors, while sculptures dot the accessible roof.