Archinect - News

Bernard Tschumi completes major museum in China

2019-01-23T17:12:00-05:00

Award-winning Swiss-French architect Bernard Tschumi has completed the Tianjin Binhai Exploratorium, a massive new museum that will be joining MVRDV's futuristic library as one of five main attractions in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin's growing recreational district.

Photo by Kris Provoost.

Set to open in Fall 2019, the Exploratorium will celebrate the historical and contemporary industrial achievements of the region through the use of cutting-edge, interactive technology such as VR. Considered the birthplace of the Chinese industrial revolution, exhibitions will explore the city's role as a center for manufacturing, space research, and widespread urbanization. In addition, the project will hold facilities for events, as well as galleries, offices, restaurants and retail.

Photo by Kris Provoost.

Tschumi designed the Exploratorium, "as a building for the past, present, and the future of Tianjin," the architect describes. Conceived as a series of seven conical cylinders, the uniqu...

Books! Books everywhere! MVRDV completes Tianjin Binhai Public Library

2017-11-02T16:02:00-04:00

MVRDV, in collaboration with local architects Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute, has completed the much anticipated Binhai Public Library in Tianjin, China, and first photos reveal a mountainous topography of curved bookshelves creating an amorphous atrium that holds a spherical auditorium inside its center like a precious pearl within the rugged oyster shell.

While renderings from last summer still depict "The Eye" as a volume with a polished, mirrored surface — with the intent of creating a 360 degree panorama that also pulls the image of the park in front of the building into the interior of the atrium — the photos now show the auditorium skin as luminous, almost paper-like translucent.

Read on for more images and a project description from the architects.

Tianjin Binhai Library was designed and built in a record-breaking time
of only three years due to a tight schedule imposed by the local
municipality. Next to many media rooms, it offers space f...

A closer look at "the eye" in MVRDV's Tianjin Library

2016-06-22T14:29:00-04:00

While pronounced ocular structural features are not unheard of (consider the exterior of DS+R's Broad Museum) Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV, is drawing attention to his firm's mirrored spherical auditorium sited in the almost complete 34,200 square meter Tianjin Library.

“The Eye is the centre of the library," Maas explained in a press release. "It ‘hollows out’ the building and creates, out of bookshelves, an environment to sit, to read, to hang out, to climb and to access, to create an organic social space. In its heart is the auditorium which mirrors the environment, giving a 360 degree panorama of the space inside; a truly reflective and pensive environment.”

The library will likely open to the public by mid-2017.

What else is MVRDV up to?