With the 2008 Summer Olympics and the completion of OMA’s CCTV headquarters amongst other high profile architectural projects, Beijing has become a showcase for international architectural practices. The National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) competition presented an incredible opportunity for the office to participate in this exciting architectural arena of 21st Century China.
NAMOC was to be located in Beijing’s Olympic Park, an auspicious site with views toward Herzog & de Meuron’s iconic ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium. Since the closing of the 2008 Games, the park has been under-utilized, its vast spaces designed for the Olympic crowds remaining largely devoid of activity.
The Chinese government’s vision was to transform the Olympic Park into a major cultural center, with the construction of a new science museum, a Chinese history museum, and the new NAMOC. In response to the massing of the master plan prepared by the city (model on top), the office proposed the three museums to be configured around three courtyards, with NAMOC as the main anchor in the center (model below).
The orientation of NAMOC on the site (2) was intended to anchor and reinforce a connective route for visitors arriving from the Dragon River promenade at the front of the building (1) to the proposed commercial development along the urban edge behind the museum (3).
Our proposal for NAMOC was designed to complement the existing ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium (to the right) in its monumental scale and iconic character.
NAMOC’s ambitious building program called for the construction of 120,000 SM of new space. The museum was to accommodate three major sequences of galleries – each devoted to a specific theme – as well as a major art conservation institute, and associated amenities such as art education lecture rooms, an auditorium and public dining facilities. Using the color-coded programmatic building blocks, the team explored a variety of spatial arrangements to maximize synergies between the various museum departments. We arrived at a configuration inspired by the classic ‘Chinese knot’.
The ‘Chinese knot’ was to rest on a porous rectilinear plinth that would accommodate the conservation institute and other public amenities and circulation space. The void between these two solid volumes defined a generous atrium space accessible from both the riverfront and the city side.
Within the ‘Chinese knot’, the stepped arrangement of interlocking galleries were intended to promote visual connection and spatial flexibility.
This strategy allowed the design team to create a variety of differently sized galleries capable of hosting exhibitions as diverse as painting, sculpture and large-scale installations.
This approach to the arrangement of the galleries permitted a variety of curatorial approaches, and was to be accessible either directly through two vertical elevator cores, or in a more experiential and perambulatory fashion through a system of elevators and escalators.
The museum’s public amenities were distributed through the building’s various levels to provide appropriate relief from gallery-fatigue for visitors (diagram on left). Despite the richness and diversity of the proposed gallery experience, the team was also careful to study back-of-house operations to ensure the efficient delivery and loading of art, as well as providing ample space for storage (diagram on right).
We looked to traditional Chinese architecture for inspiration as to how to further develop the ‘Chinese knot’. Our goal was to avoid pastiche and to respect and learn from the formal relationships and materiality evident in traditional Chinese monuments to arrive at a new form of architectural expression pertinent to 21st Century China.
By articulating the circulatory elements and public spaces sculpturally around the “Chinese Knot” configuration of rectilinear gallery spaces, the scheme began to take on the appearance of a “Cloud”.
We imagined this ‘cloud’ might be constructed in the white marble so characteristic of the classic architecture of Beijing’s Forbidden City; an ethereal presence ‘floating’ above a masonry plinth.
The atrium space between the ‘cloud’ and the plinth was conceived to host monumental-scale sculptural installations - a "Great Hall" for artistic experimentations.
We developed NAMOC’s main entrance as a continuation of the landscaped promenade along the riverfront.
Visitors were to ascend the ‘cloud’ passing through eight levels of exhibition spaces through the glass enclosed circulation system of escalators and sky-bridges each endowed with views across the Olympic Park and the city’s Dragon Riverfront.
The office’s proposal was selected to go forward to the second round of the two-phase international competition. Although I did not participate in the subsequent submission (I left the office to launch my own architectural studio shortly after the first round ), I remain very proud to have been a part of this effort - a fitting conclusion to my two decades of experience at the office of Gehry Partners.
The projects in this section were designed and executed during my time at Gehry Partners LLP (the office). I am grateful to Mr. Gehry and the team at the office for their generosity and support over the years. All intellectual property rights of these projects continue to be owned by the office unless otherwise mentioned. The narrative texts on the projects are entirely personal, they do not represent the views or opinions of the office, its clients or any other third party or organization.