MAD Architectsled by Ma Yansong have designed the Pingtan Art Museum, which resembles a floating island.
Situated in a body of water in the center of Pingtan, Fujian Province, the museum can only be accessed via a narrow bridge. With a construction area of more than 40,000 square meters, it will take RMB 800 million to build what is promised to be the largest private collection museum in China.
Construction has begun on the Pingtan Art Museum and MAD Architects shared images of the design on their website last week. The structure has a fluid form of undulating landscape with cave-like interiors and walls of concrete mixed with local sand and shell.
The museum is an integral part of a top-down push to transform Pingtan into a new urban area. Pingtan Island is the largest of Fujian’s islands and is of strategic importance as it is the nearest Chinese island to Taiwan. Currently, Pingtan is home to fisheries industry and a military base, but the launch of the Comprehensive Experimental Zone project in 2010 means the quiet island will soon become a bustling new city.
At the center of it all is the Pingtan Art Museum, a planned landmark of soft power to facilitate cultural exchange between the mainland and Taiwan. Scheduled to open in 2016, its debut exhibition boasts more than a thousand pieces of “national treasures,” however the specific collections to be shown have yet to be confirmed.
Click on the slideshow to see the images.
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