Jean Nouvel-Designed Art Museum Breaks Ground in Beijing

Construction work began this month on the Jean Nouvel-designed National Art Museum of China, on the site of the former Olympic grounds in Beijing.

Pritzker Prize winner Nouvel beat out Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid in a 2013 competition to create what the Chinese government proclaims will be one of the “greatest museums of the world.” The art museum will contain collections dating back to the Ming dynasty and will include a research and education center, auditorium, large-scale interior garden and a series of public spaces.

Nouvel’s design for the National Museum of China (NAMOC) features a finely perforated facade wrapping the exterior of the building, which allows sunlight to filter in, and supports a six-storey indoor garden.

“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,” said Nouvel. In inimitable architect-speak the winner of the Wolf Prize for Arts added that, “It thus resists the laws of gravity while asserting its presence.”

The Summer Hall at the centre of the ground floor features a gold ceiling that mimics the roofs of traditional homes in central Beijing, which can be viewed from the upper floors of the museum.

Creating a New Cultural District in Beijing

The concept for the museum include extends into creating a new cultural district in the Olympic Park, near the famed Bird’s Nest stadium.

Speaking of his latest work, Nouvel said, “The museum is a milestone that now establishes architecture as a civilizational medium, as the memorial symbiosis of nature and human expression. These exceptional conditions are able to elicit this rising attitude, this symbiotic response, and goes beyond being just a traditional competition of established styles.”

The museum has a 30,000 square metre footprint, and its management expect it to attract 12 million visitors per year, making it the world’s busiest art museum.