Sculpted by the Mountains: The Sunner Museum Redefines Rural Architecture in China

In the foothills of China’s Wuyi Mountains, a striking new landmark has emerged — not a pagoda, temple, or modern tower, but a building that reinterprets the agricultural past through radical architectural form. The Sunner Museum, designed by Atelier Alter Architects, is a 6,000-square-metre facility nestled in Nanping City, Fujian Province, developed for Sunner Group, one of China’s largest poultry farming companies.

This is not merely a museum of farming — it’s a symbol of ecological awareness, technological progress, and rural pride. With its trio of sweeping green roofs, folded concrete façades, and rooftop courtyards, the museum reshapes the landscape itself. It doesn’t sit on the land — it grows from it. This sculptural infrastructure becomes both a public gathering space and a monument to the region’s agricultural legacy, set against the backdrop of the dramatic Wuyi mountain range.

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Architecture as Terrain: Merging Topography and Typology

The Sunner Museum replaces a series of flood-prone 1970s buildings with something entirely new: a structure that mimics the silhouette of the mountains around it. Atelier Alter Architects achieved this through three massive interlocking roofs, each sloping up to 45 degrees — the maximum angle for walkable green roofs while still enabling healthy plant growth. These sloped courtyards rise from the earth in a sequence that feels organic, almost geological.

The green roofs are more than formal gestures. They offer public access, panoramic views, and evening stargazing terraces, making the museum an active destination beyond exhibition hours. This blurring of building and landscape, architecture and terrain, transforms the Sunner Museum into a truly immersive civic space.

Structure in Motion: A Folded Concrete Façade

While the roofscape evokes nature, the facade speaks of craft and control. Atelier Alter opted for glass fiber-reinforced concrete, which was folded and textured to resemble feathers. These surface manipulations are not ornamental. They direct rainwater, catch light, hide functional vents, and create dynamic shadows. The folding also frames strategically placed openings, allowing daylight to pierce the thick envelope.

This technique results in a textured visual rhythm, especially on the lower levels where the concrete appears to hug the site. In the more public zones — such as the entrance, atrium, and restaurant — the folded concrete tapers and opens up, revealing expansive glass curtain walls that welcome light, visitors, and views of the mountains and river beyond.

A Monumental Interior: Column-Free Atrium and Exhibition Core

Step inside, and the drama continues. At the heart of the museum is a 30-metre-high central atrium, a column-free space that spirals around four cylindrical concrete shear walls, each 25 metres in diameter. These sculptural cores house additional exhibition areas, staircases, and vertical circulation systems.

This central volume functions not only as a structural spine but also as a vast, uninterrupted exhibition hall capable of supporting large-scale installations and events. Here, the architecture disappears into its function, providing seamless flow and visual clarity.

Material Sensitivity: Wood Meets Concrete

Despite the monumentality of the form and material, the interiors remain warm and human-scaled. Natural wood surfaces are used throughout the restaurant, lobby, and public areas to create a contrast with the raw concrete. These timber elements — from ledges and paneling to display furniture — bring a tactile softness to the interior environment.

Atelier Alter’s co-founder Xiaojun Bu emphasized that no unnecessary decoration was added; rather, the materials themselves serve as ornamentation. The concrete’s feather-like texture and the seamless transition between exterior and interior surfaces create a rich architectural language without superficial embellishment.

A Civic Space for a New Agricultural Age

While Sunner Museum functions as a technology and ecological farming exhibition center, it is also a hub for research institutions, industry gatherings, and public education. More than a museum, it is a stage for dialogue — between agriculture and technology, between rural identity and modern design, between land and form.

By replacing dormitories and disused commercial buildings with an architectural landmark, the project sends a strong signal: rural regions are not architectural afterthoughts, but centers of innovation. The Sunner Museum proves that rural architecture can be bold, public, and forward-looking, breaking the binaries of urban versus rural or old versus new.

✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight

The Sunner Museum embodies a growing shift in rural architecture — one that demands contextual sensitivity, ecological intelligence, and cultural ambition. Atelier Alter Architects does not simply create an icon; they create a building that listens: to its landscape, to its people, to its climate.

The use of folded concrete as both form and function, the integration of walkable roofs as social spaces, and the balance between technological exhibition and community gathering reflect an advanced understanding of architecture as civic infrastructure. Sunner Museum offers an inspiring precedent for designing with terrain, for grounding innovation in place.

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The photography is by Highlite Images.