Shrine of Knowledge, Palace of Aesthetics, Or Theater of History Museum Design in China
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
SHRINE OF KNOWLEDGE, PALACE OF AESTHETICS, OR THEATER OF HISTORY MUSEUM DESIGN IN CHINA OU NING . un musée qui est peut-être celui de sa mémoire . —Chris Marker, La Jetée, !"#$ In the December $!, $%!&, issue of the Economist, an article about museums in China stated that in !"'", the country had only $( muse- ums. It went on to note that, according to the Chinese Museums Association, by $%!$ the number had increased to &,)## museums, including '(! that had opened that year. The government’s current five-year plan had projected &,(%% museums by $%!(; the goal was surpassed three years early. The United States, by comparison, saw only $% to '% museums built per year in the decade prior to the $%%) financial crisis. The article also referenced the term “museumification,” coined by Jeffrey Johnson, director of China Megacities Lab at Colum- bia University, in response to the Chinese museum boom.¹ “Museum- ification” is derived from “gentrification” and precisely sums up the motivation behind the museum-building fever. As a rising political power, China needs cultural achievements to manifest its “so, power,” and through museum building, its emerging capital can catch up to its increasing power and achieve social impact, while acquiring land for still greater commercial gain. 119 The current frenzy over museums in China is somewhat similar Drawing its inspiration from the Chinese calligraphic form of to Europe in the sixteenth century, during the Age of Discovery, when “one”—a horizontal stroke in ink—Nouvel’s winning design was consid- cabinets de curiosités or Wunderkammern showed off relics and trea- ered by NAMOC deputy director Xie Xiaofan as the most representative sures collected from colonies overseas. To promote the great Chinese of the essence of twenty-first-century China. Even though Nouvel empire’s long history and its liberal, pro-globalization image today, the borrowed the calligraphic movement to shape the building, he did not Chinese government launched a massive project of public museum take the traditional Chinese symbol literally, but gave the museum a construction to both house historical artifacts and display contempo- strong contemporary identity with a crystal-clear glass façade. In rary art. The scheme at once masks the nationalist political agenda addition, he ingeniously used the nearby dragon-shaped waterscape and declares the ambition to compete in the free market. The involve- and Olympic Green, and the future gathering of museumgoers outside ment in museum development by the private sector, on the other hand, the building, to his advantage by mirroring their reflections in the provides showrooms to demonstrate their taste in art and culture, and façade. What’s most eye-catching about his architectural rendering is ethical rationales for their profitable projects. Many private museums the sea of red flags floating above the museum’s main entrance, which are built and operated by real estate developers, as they have come to could be interpreted in different ways: the residue, in the French imagi- realize that building museums is an effective means of obtaining land nation, of Maoist intellectuals from the May !"#) uprising in Paris, or and marketing the adjacent residential projects with attractive cultural an unspoken nod to the current political power in China and to nation- packages. This motive greatly affects the design of Chinese museums. alist ideals. Whatever the implications, Nouvel’s design triumphed over The National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) is at the highest Gehry’s reserved first bid in China, which veered toward the conserva- level of art museums in the country. The original building was created tive; over Hadid’s arrogant “universal approach” with her signature to store and present a collection of ink paintings, calligraphy, oil paint- digital distortion, which lacked specificity; and the weak architectural ings, prints, and sculptures, but its design lags behind the develop- form in Koolhaas’s proposal, and the fact that his new Chinese Central ment of contemporary art in China. A,er the close of the $%%) Beijing Television Headquarters attracted much criticism in China. Summer Olympic Games, plans for a new building were formulated. Regardless of the intense competition, architects remain the hot According to the Beijing Overall Urban Planning !""#–!"!" document, topic in the Chinese museum boom. The Today Art Museum, founded the new building will be located in the center of the Olympic Green in Beijing in $%%$ by real estate developer Zhang Baoquan in his resi- north of the city center. Extending Beijing’s existing -.)-kilometer dential project Apple Community, is the country’s first private art north-south central axis, the Olympic Green, with its various Olympic museum. The site is a former industrial facility, transformed by archi- Games venues and facilities, will also include many new public cultural tect Wang Hui. Wang sealed all the windows but retained the original facilities, such as the Sinology Center, the National Arts & Cra,s brick structure. The interior floors made way for an atrium suitable for Museum, the Chinese Technology Museum, and the new NAMOC large-scale installations. He also added an asymmetrical steel stair- building, all currently in the planning stage. Upon its completion, case near the entrance, updating an architectural time capsule of the new NAMOC building will become the largest art museum in the industrialization with the contemporary taste for geometric design. In world at !&%,%%% square meters ['$#,%%% square feet], and will mainly the past decade, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, founded collect and display twentieth-century art from China and beyond. in Beijing in $%%- by Belgian collectors Baron and Baroness Guy and The architectural competition for the building began in $%%), and more Myriam Ullens, and the Minsheng Art Museum, established in Shang- than a hundred proposals were received from architecture firms across hai in $%%) by the China Minsheng Banking Corporation, were also the globe, including Pritzker-winning starchitects Frank Gehry, Zaha converted from old factories by the team of Jean-Michel Wilmotte and Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and Jean Nouvel. Qingyun Ma, and by Liang Jingyu, respectively. These museums were 120 121 Museum and the Xiangshan campus of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. The innovative aesthetics that stem from Chinese traditions, which explore the memorial function of architecture and connect new structures to the pressing reality of Chinese urbanization, started to garner more domestic support only a,er Wang’s Pritzker recognition. The Arata Isozaki-designed Himalayas Art Museum, which was developed in Shanghai by realtor Dai Zhikang as part of his commer- cial Himalayas Center project, was completed in $%!!. Its alien struc- ture imitates that of forests and limestone caves, amid a complex that includes a hotel, theater, and luxury shopping mall. In $%!$, the collec- tor couple Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei opened the Long Art Museum in Pudong, Shanghai. Envisioned by architect Zhong Song, the pale granite cube has few windows and is home to the couple’s classical art collection and a portion of their contemporary holdings. (They later opened another space in Puxi especially for their contemporary art collection, designed by Liu Yichun.) In $%!&, Lu Jun and his son Lu Xun Fig. !!. Ningbo Museum, designed by Wang Shu of Amateur Architecture Studio founded the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, where Steven Holl captured a populist evocation of “Chinese-ness” with a hanging structure of custom-made, bamboo-mold concrete. The ambitious Sifang Parkland, either remodeled or expanded following contemporary art museum formerly known as the China International Exhibition of Practical Archi- standards, but maintained the integrity of the original buildings. Cou- tecture, is the (%-acre site for $' buildings designed by two dozen pled with proper business operations, these museums successfully architects and artists. To date, eleven of these buildings have been rejuvenated their once-dilapidated industrial neighborhoods, setting completed, but so far Sifang Art Museum is the only one in use. up a popular urban renewal model in China. In $%!', Indonesian entrepreneur and collector Budi Tek opened There was a period in China when Richard Florida’s theory of the Yuz Museum, “Yuz” being his family name in Chinese. Housed in a “creative class” and the Guggenheim’s “Bilbao effect” were all the renovated hangar in the old Shanghai Longhua Airport, the museum rage. Both the Chinese government and private investors saw the was designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, who also designed creative industries as a breakpoint for urban renewal and future devel- the $%!& Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London. Fujimoto added a new opment. For many cities and communities, commissioning architects wing made completely of glass, welcoming in the vista of the surround- to design museums of curious shapes seemed the only way to stay ing greenery and making the structure a “green box.” Coming up is a competitive. Designed by Wang Shu and opened in $%%), the Ningbo more outlandish museum project in Fujian province, where artist Cai Museum made a bold statement (fig. &&). Its sloping and radiating gray Guo-Qiang, in collaboration with the city government, will establish a walls, made of bricks recycled from numerous demolition sites, juxta- contemporary art museum in his hometown of Quanzhou. The budget pose traces of time with dense and random window openings,