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Nanjing Building, Architecture, Image, Design, Architect, Development
Nanjing Mueum of Art & Architecture, China
Chinese Project by Steven Holl
STEVEN HOLL ARCHITECTS Feb 2008
Nanjing Museum of Art & Architecture
Nanjing, China

Perspective is the fundamental historic difference between Western
and Chinese painting. After the 13th Century, Western painting developed
vanishing points in fixed perspective. Chinese painters, although
aware of perspective, rejected the single-vanishing point method,
instead producing landscapes with "parallel perspectives"
in which the viewer travels within the painting. Shifting viewpoints,
layers of space, expanses of mist and water, all characterize the
deep alternating spatial mysteries of the composition of Chinese painting.
The new museum is sited at the gateway to the Contemporary International
Practical Exhibition of Architecture in the lush green landscape of
the Pearl Spring near Nanjing, China. The museum explores the shifting
viewpoints, layers of space, and expanses of mist and water, which
characterize the deep alternating spatial mysteries of the composition
of Chinese painting. The museum is formed by a "field" of
parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in black rammed earth
over which a light "figure" hovers. The straight passages
on the ground level gradually turn into the winding passage of the
figure above. The upper gallery, suspended high in the air, unwraps
in a clockwise turning sequence and culminates at in-position
viewing of the city of Nanjing in the distance. This visual axis creates
a linkage back to the great Ming Dynasty capital city.
Limiting the colors of the museum to black and white connects it to
the ancient ink paintings, but also gives a background to feature
the colors and textures of the artwork to be exhibited. The walls
are of blackened concrete which is formed in bamboo-lined formwork.
The texture gives a relief of the cross joints of native bamboo. The
upper gallery in double wall translucent membranes allows the shadows
of steel support trusses a ghost-like exposure.
The 3000 sq. m. museum's flexible exhibition spaces are complimented
by a Tea House and curator's residence facing the south light and
re-circulated water of the pond. Geothermal cooling and heating recycled
and low embodied energy materials are part of the green building aims
of the project.
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Nanjing Museum of Art & Architecture
architects : Steven Holl
Chinese Buildings
Chinese Architect Studios
Chinese Buildings

World Architecture : e-architect
- key buildings across the globe
Comments / photos
for the Nanjing Building page welcome: info@e-architect.co.uk
Nanjing Architecture China - page: adrian welch
/ isabelle lomholt |
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