Ateliers Jean Nouvel's new National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing will be quite the culture giant. Built in 1963, the new NAMOC will be 130,000 sq. meters to house its various collections of 100,000 pieces from the 1500s to contemporary times. Jean Nouvel and the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD) announced late last week the official launch of the design and construction of the new museum.

Ateliers Jean Nouvel describes that the museum is designed to "catalyze" the senses and to physically convey the complex "spirit of Chinese civilization" throughout its history. This concept of the passing of time and timelessness is suggested through the museum's vast historical collection and the museum's natural elements that change with the seasons. The program includes permanent and temporary exhibition galleries, a research and education center, reserves, an auditorium, and public and admin spaces.

Here are more details the architecture firm sent us:

"At the beginning of the XXIst century museums are still too often considered as places for conservation, consultation and education. These are useful functions, but based on conventional thinking and cultural consumption. The museums should become lively places, resonating with invention where exhibits prove that sensations and emotions triggered by art are amplified by time, by the complicit juxtaposition of works from various times, and all the eras of invention."

"The NAMOC represents an incredible opportunity for the most ambitious materialization of a place for expression, of communication and attraction, a place that witnesses the vitality of a civilization, the civilization of the greatest people on earth. Our proposal is the result of one year of catalysis, of immersions, of dialogs and explorations to translate, synthetize, symbolize and materialize the spirit of the Chinese civilization... our goal is to protect the miracles created with ink throughout the centuries, to reveal the force of a living art... to welcome the artist of tomorrow..."

"The summer hall is overhung with a gold ceiling, inspired by the great roofs and traditional painted ceilings that can be made out from afar. This carved, gold-painted ceiling offers a sequential theoretical view of the history of Chinese art and culture from the fifteenth century up to the current day, as well as of the centuries to come...

Images of major or emblematic works belonging to different periods and influences form a panorama of Chinese painting and culture. The contents will be decided in consultation with the most eminent Chinese and international specialists."

"The NAMOC is written in space as a fragment of an ideogram shaped by an artist over a long period of time, giving it both a sense of mastery and voluntary incompleteness: by taking off the ground it imposes itself into the sky. It thus resists the laws of gravity while asserting its presence."

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