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CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM

CULTURAL, CIVIC
Client: Nanchong City
Location:
Nanchong, China
Program:
Exhibition, art museum, cafe, retail, auditorium
Area:
1,798 m² (19,355 ft²)
Status:
Competition, concept, first prize
The Contemporary Art Museum reimagines an architectural archetype—the acropolis, and questions “what is a ‘landmark’ in a society that relates to nature symbiotically as opposed to hierarchically?”

PRESERVE THE SILHOUETTE OF THE EXISTING RIDGELINE WHILE ASSERTING A SKYLINE


Respectfully altering yet intimately integrated into its site, the museum preserves the silhouette of its hilltop’s existing ridgeline while asserting a skyline inspired by the region’s terraced agricultural ponds. Intersecting umbrella canopies, each with a different height, respond to the site’s topographic contours and sculpt the diverse character of the museum’s interior spaces.

CANOPIES BLURRING BOUNDARIES WITH STRUCTURAL AND SPATIAL LOGIC

Like a mushroom or lily pad, each canopy rises from a central column that organically expands into a flared capital, which doubles as a ceiling internally and a roof garden externally. Clustered into a ‘forest’, the canopies not only blur boundaries between inside and out via glass enclosures, but also from its underlying structural and spatial logic.

Team: Andrew Heid, Chengliang Li, Christopher Purpura, Guangyu
Collaborators:
China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, ECOLAND, agenceTER, Zijing Wang, Naiding Yao

Distinctions: First prize



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