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Art Museum of Yue Minjun
On one hand, there are fantastic landscapes for Qingcheng Mountain, with continuous brooks and wreathed mist…
On the other hand, there are private art galleries, with extremely personal art attitudes and contemporary features…
When tracing back to ancient times and dreaming of future, we find two contrary propositions that meet and collide in Qingcheng Mountain.
What type of architecture language can be used to tell such incompatible and interesting encounter?
Not far away, Dujiang Weir, with more than 2000 years of history, has been witnessing the thought of “complying with nature and combining human and nature” and also fostering a special natural and cultural environment for this area. In this project, we try to talk with nature in an inheritance way and try to create a medium to overlap reality and imagination, nature and technology, tradition and future which seem to be contrary.
The art museum, located by the Shimeng River, is designed into an organic form full of smoothness and diversity, reflecting a cobblestone taken from the river. A light metal coating is applied to this ancient natural form, mildly reflects surrounding scenes and melts into nature, which is like a piece of concealed clothes and full of sense of future, making the building suspend over the ground and be like a flying body from the future. Therefore, we present an art museum which features artists’ direct and affirmed personal attitudes, participating in nature in a “lost” way and starts a secret dialogue with ancient times through a language of future.
Project Team
Architect: Pei Zhu, Tong Wu
Associates in Charge: Zeng Xiaoming
Design Team: He Fan, Jiao Chongxia, Li Yongquan, Jiao Chongxia, Fan Xuelan
Structural Consultant: Rory McGowan(Arup)
Photographer: Fang Zhenning
Studio Pei-Zhu
Studio Pei-Zhu is a young practice of under 20 employees based in Beijing. For us, the challenge of design is to provide practical solutions while reflecting a strong and innovative conceptual thinking and a critical outlook.
Our projects, therefore, are an exploration of methods to connect process to product.
The framework for this investigation and the experimental nature of our work is formed by the context in which it takes place - Urban China. The recent rapid development of the country has created new urban environments that can certainly be described as modern but lack the vitality and soul of older districts. One of our main concerns in design is to reconnect modern urban china to its roots, reinterpreting the vernacular in a contemporary context to create architectural devices capable of energizing urban activities. In this way we hope to contribute to a regional variance of contemporary architecture appropriate to its local context.
Awards
2007 Design Vanguard, Architectural Record
2006 China Award, Architectural Record
2004 WA China Architectural Prize
2003 China Architectural Arts Award
1989 Award of Special Merit from UNESCO
Exhibition
2008 Solo exhibition RISD, University of Rhode Island, N.Y.
2008 China Construction, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, N.Y.
2008 Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Architecture, Paris
2008 Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Architecture, Barcelona
2007 China Production, Austria
2008 China Design Now, Victoria and Albert Museum, UK
2007 Xisi Bei International Invitation Exhibition, China
2006 1st Biennale of the Architecture and Art of the Canary Islands, Spain（participated together with Rem Koolhaas and MVRDV）
2006 Chinese contemporary architecture, Rotterdam, Netherlands Architecture Institute
Projects & competitions
2007 Guggenheim museum Beijing, for Guggenheim Foundation
2007 Guggenheim Art Pavilion Abu Dhabi, for Guggenheim Foundation
2007 Courtyard House Renovation for artist Cai Guoqiang
2004 Digital Beijing, an Olympic project for 2008, Beijing, won the first prize in national design competition
19 Comments
- Peter Eisenman
I was re-reading Eisenman's comments and this paragraph summoned this project to mind. I've looked at this project three times, and read the text (I think there may be an opacity in the language brought on by translation) several more. But I still can't figure out how to get into this project; I don't mean finding the door, I mean critiquing it, at least without being flippant and shallow.
Which, with the pictures of these earnest and brave architects posted, I can't do!
I think if there was a rendering with ground plane materials, including a lot of those smooth river rocks the form was inspired by, I might be able to make an acceptable connection. But then I still have to ask: why does an art museum look like a river rock?
I'm feeling stuck on this one. Assistance, anyone?
Agree with the previous posters - if a project is shallow, how can you critique it in a meaningful way?
The smoothness of projects like these lies not in their flow of surface and space, but in their ability to escape analytical discussion.
The Eisenman quote is spot-on.
i am not a chinese, so i tried to look up a few books to see if there is a cultural meaning associated with cobblestone, but i could not find any although dragon/jade rocks had been collected and painted. so it seems that the analogy has more to do with the artist Yue's figures which became icons. it also seems to do with iconic architectures built in beijing and with desecrating icons with icons. i think what concerns me here is a problem of education systems. i went to school in the u.s., and our school had a bauhaus influence, so imitating masters was discouraged. however, looking at the works done by students in non-western countries, you see a lot of projects' appearances resembling works of starchitects in magazines, and the texts they read are the short descriptions of iconic projects, which have nothing to do with the creative processes nor developments of architects' thoughts (in relations to social issues of the time) over decades of their careers. a lot of times, those descriptions have marketing intentions aiming at the general public; for example, herzog & de meuron's olympic stadium being called bird's nest, paul andreu's egg, sir norman foster's dragon. i almost think studio pei-zhu should have designed the builing like a monstrous dragon rock. but then it would have looked like rem koolhaas's scheme for whitney museum extension, so it would still have been considered as an act of desecration. (i am just following a script as well.) anyways, i think it is something hierarchical/repressive societies will have to overcome if they WANT to develop their own characters, cultural expressions and identities in globalizing trends because right now, i doubt that people think such development is an important issue, and it is very difficult to get that point across especially when internationalism is superior and will get you business while regionalism is associated with marginal politically left ideology and thus not only seen as backward but also severely disadvantaged in market. i went a little bit off the track with generalization. i guess what i should say is it is amazing that the building is getting realized, and i understand how the concepts might have been developed as a critique of icons and western culture. however, it seems important to me to try to understand the careers of iconic architects as a whole in relation to social contexts they have worked in to get to this point because that is where i find endless things to be learned.
it's hard to stay out of discussions when they begin w/ an Eisenman quote.
egoist - i think you've got a very good bead on the nature of the situation, and there's differing opinions on whether playing the marketing labels game is doing damage to the profession or that it's simply a necessary evil (i.e. "if it get's built, then the ends justify the means").
this latter position - the 'by any means necessary' attitude - is ultimately a destructive one. Eisenman's early work cutting down the rationality of Modernism was a good thing, but the revolutionary nature of the post-'68 mindset is long obselete. architects have been the slowest to bat to realize this (again) and the profession is undermining itself by sustaining this shallow game of labels and metaphors that operate outside what makes buildings truly meaningful.
based on my most recent experiences, i think this marketing game is taken way too seriously in our institutions of learning; a more important discussion about the significance of buildings and design is being eclipsed by emphasis on marketing oneself and the project via this kind of symbolism. ironcially, new technology is often offered as part of the rationale for ambitious visions like this one; seems silly that moving ahead with the possibilities in advanced building techniques only makes room for extended metaphors such as the river rock.
i realize we started this discussion by suggesting that the river rock concept might simply be a marketing tool, but when and where does the conversation elevate beyond this? not in the public forum - the metaphor must be sustained there in order to shield the architect from conservative criticism that might hurt the project's future. so is it in school? not lately as the discussion seems to be too deeply invested in training our new designers to play the same game.
Eisenman's recent rhetoric is a sad attempt at being comfortable with the self-desctructive path he chose for himself. It would be far more interesting to see him come to grips with his contradictory nature directly instead of shielding himself from criticism with the post-modern thought shell game. if he keeps this up, the sooner he lapses from the comtemporary architecture spotlight, the better.
sweet project, tho.
Though I started with Eisenman, I'm not really interested in discussing him on this thread, I just found that quote to be something of an entry for me into how to critique this project.
I think egoist has, in addition to trying to address the cultural subtleties that I can't get, brought up something more meaty: building as marketing tool, and whether that has any relevance to a local culture.
johnszot, how do you get from the river rock concept might simply be a marketing tool to sweet project? I'd definitely agree they are super sweet renderings, and thus sweet marketing tools, but I still can't see this object as a building. I know that if it gets built it will not be as sleek as the renderings show, and so it seems like any of the "real world" requirements of construction and inhabitation - lighting, for example, or art, since this is a museum - will be seen as compromises. my personal belief is that within those "compromises" great design and a gesamtkunstwerk, to throw in another culture - can be found.
As an example: Those people standing on the roof aren't people, they're "marketing tools" too: an idea about inhabiting the roof is there, but not realized in any way that is meaningful beyond the notion of being on a roof. There is no evidence of inhabitation: no railing, or conversely, no skateboards under the figures' feet so they can take advantage of that slope!
But, since my critique above about the people on the roof is "shallow and flippant": what am I missing? Is it something Chinese, global, iconographic, revolutionary or other that would make a rendering that seems so unrealistic be effective as a marketing tool?
If the images shown are only communication between architects, then I get it: it's a concept sketch, and the Yue Minjun figures looking at/tossing it are the playful games we all play in studio: putting cars on top of models, making fake signage, etc., as a way to "become friends with" our projects (to paraphrase from Architecture of Happiness).
But this is actually going to be built, as is?
LB - my point about the marketing tool is consistent with simply recognizing the inherent 'awesomeness' of the project. whether the river rock is just a tag-line or not, doesn't matter. in the end, the project is admirably ambitious and i'm not a big believer in the absolute symbolic power of monuments like this one - mostly for the reasons already clearly put down by egoist.
my bit about the institutions of higher learning, etc. is frustration with the lack of open discussion about more subjective criteria in design curricula today - the diagram approach has been nothing but a smoke screen to assist experiments in form to make it beyond schematic design by couching them in quasi-scientific contexts. i see no reason why we couldn't start bringing back a higher degree of artistic discussion to the table when it comes to evaluating a design (y'know - composition, balance, tension - things that influence a project more heavily than most architects like to admit, publicly anyways).
your frustration with the images seems a bit misplaced to me - the real discussion lies in the kind of flippant philosophical nonsense Eisenman has been passing off as deep thinking lately. i think you have a good point when you accurately identified the real design challenge as being the translation of the idea so far into a working building with all the trimmings, but the images are no different than any other project in that respect - so why get bent out of shape about it? the time to raise those issues is the moment where the proposal (or product) clearly deviates from the original intention. in the meantime, let's get behind them and hope they make it as exciting as the images so far. they could probably use our support.
so far there's not enough info to really get up in their grill - so 'totally sweet' will have to do for now.
That's the thing, johnszot, I feel like they COULD probably use our support, and I want to give it, because I know how hard it is to put something out in the world and either get slammed or only hear silience (the latter is what was happening to this showcase feature only before I put out my questions.).
But I fear my constructive criticism, at this point, would be veering off down some tangent that wouldn't be helpful and thus would be shallow criticism. For example, it's an art museum, and yet there isn't a straight wall in the place, which means hanging flat work is going to be a pain in the ass or will imbue the art with a tension that wasn't intended by the artist who probably expected to see it on a vertical wall. This isn't new criticism; museums going back to at least the Guggenheim have set forth this challenge. But neither the written brief above nor the art-free images let me know if this is a pertinent criticism of the scheme. Maybe the only art intended to be here is sculpture - the sculpture of Yue Minjun, on a sloping floor - and that influenced the form. But nothing I read above tells me if that is true or not.
Perhaps I'm just frustrated because this is the only Showcase feature so far that I haven't really liked immediately, and I'm trying to figure out how to.
Oh, and I should also point out that I haven't only gotten "bent out of shape" by this project's renderings; half the renderings I see this days bend me in exactly the same uncomfortable way! ;-)
liberty bell seems to be turning into madonna with a long neck. ~~
i want to go just a little bit backward to the discussion of the necessity to appeal to larger population by citing a response made by nader tehrani featured in perspecta 39 to a criticism for using an image of flying carpet as a semiotic device.
"i think the moment you reduce a project to a kind of icon - like a flying carpet - is the moment you kill the project. the project is never reducible to one reading, one interpretation. yes, it is necessary for you to sell a project, and you will resort to many techniques to do that and to make it communicable. selling it is a problem of communication and making people understand in one sound byte how something will operate. but, at the same time, there's a level of organizational and infrastructural complexity to projects like this that are generated internally and resonate within the discipline; that cannot be covered with a sound byte, one image, or a single reading. basically, the argument is that the form is not merely standing on its own terms; it is also finding its alibis in its structural, mechanical, and circulatory logics, and they, in turn, will lead to many other levels of interpretation. it's the delicate negotiation between all of these contingencies that will tend to suppress one's impulse to easily categorize it as the duck or an icon, as such. while we may dabble in the tongue-in-cheek, it is not interesting if the project is not considered in terms of the larger context of decisions of which it is a part. this, to me, is very important."
perhaps this project should be called The Museum of Disappeared Art as there seems to be no art in the museum.
I think if you put yourself under Chinese hyper speedy development situation, sometimes chaos, you could hardly say no to a museum like this, when the client enjoys your idea and want to realize it. My point is, how to find your balance in this competition?
One thing I can not understanding of this project is the exterior space design. where is that? Is the rendering image truely represent the realization or just illusion.
Furthermore, like CCTV and TVCC by OMA, this project was sort of refelction of Chinese political power, according to the saying of Koolhaas.
And right now, we have big earthquake in Sichuan area, so how difficult for this realiztion? I do not know. Maybe Arup could tackle this because they never say "no".
Actually, Xing, your comment helps me understand this project a LOT better. I was thinking about it as a more typical American musem project, with lots of building committee meetings, public comment periods, appeasement of patrons, value engineering...a long constipated process.
Stven Holl talks about his own project in China, Linked Hybrid, in this podcast, and the LOT-EK Sanlutin project is covered in Architect magazine this month. Those examples both show that the design and construction process in China right now is like nothing I am familiar with, and somehow in that context the stone musem makes something close to sense!
Understanding a project is fine - seeing the process and the underlying forces of architecture clearly, is an obviously good goal. Also, the Chinese reality concerning development and financing is probably the guiding factor concerning this particular design for a museum.
Another (the real) question is how can we assess the value of a project as architecture and environment?
Just saying "well, it's chinese" does not really make this museum's total arbitrariness any more valuable, even if it makes it more understandable.
I agree completely, Helsinki.
klaatu barada nikto
this project has in my view nothing to do with a "reflection of chinese politics" (i do not know a single building in china doing this in an 'interesting way').
it even is not really following the initial idea of a stone - it is much too regular, too clean - as the rendering show, and then - indeed - it losses the stone-reference and turns out as just another blob-fancy-organic icon of itself or of a certain new-modern style for the globalized ipod-nerds
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