“The Guardian Art Center is a lot more than just a museum”: Büro Ole Scheeren completes Guardian Art Center in Beijing

2018-01-24T15:19:00-05:00

“The Guardian Art Center is a lot more than just a museum,” says Ole Scheeren, principal of the eponymous Beijing practice Büro Ole Scheeren. The german architect has just completed a major project in the heart of Beijing: the Guardian Art Center, a custom-built auction house complete with museum quality galleries and state of the art conservation facilities as well as restaurants, a hotel, flexible event spaces, and integrated public transport infrastructure.

Photo by Iwan Baan.

“It’s not a hermetic institution, but rather an acknowledgement of the hybrid state of contemporary culture. It is a Chinese puzzle of interlocking cultural spaces and public functions that fuse art and culture with events and lifestyle” says Sheeren. Built near the Forbidden City and the National Art Museum of China, the Guradian Art Center is a new hybrid cultural institution that balances between the traditional and the contemporary, a concept that is growing more prominent as China undergoes major urban ...

Büro Ole Scheeren reveals design of new Guardian Art Center hybrid auction house in Beijing

2015-03-10T15:21:00-04:00

Construction is already in progress for the new Guardian Art Center, China's oldest auction house, in Beijing. Designed by Büro Ole Scheeren in collaboration with Beijing Institute of Architectural Design and local planning authorities over four years, the Guardian Art Center is an embodiment of its significant historic surroundings that "explicitly pays respect to its context and location" while still functioning as an auction house, Ole Scheeren describes in a statement. In other words, the GAC is yet another structure that reflects the balance between tradition and contemporary, a concept that is growing more prominent as China continues to undergo major urban development.

The GAC is located at an intersection where commerce and culture meet: Wangfujing, Beijing's famous commercial street and Wusi Dajie, where the New Cultural Movement originated following the Qing Dynasty. As a souped-up version of its typology, the hybrid auction house consists of 8 levels above ground and 5 be...

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“The Guardian Art Center is a lot more than just a museum”: Büro Ole Scheeren completes Guardian Art Center in Beijing

Büro Ole Scheeren reveals design of new Guardian Art Center hybrid auction house in Beijing