China Wood Sculpture Museum, Harbin
Stunning Icicle of Harbin
China Wood Sculpture Museum offers a willful experience to its visitors on the artistic works engraved in wood. Ar. Ma Yansong, the founding principal of MAD Architects, who designed China Wood Sculpture Museum shares with Built Expressions that wood, was the sole concept on the design aspect of this striking project.
Harbin is a place well recognized for ice- covered landscapes and wooden sculptures. The arctic city of China has recently carved out a ravishing museum to exhibit wooden artistic works in it. The museum is entitled as 'China Wood Sculpture Museum' and was designed by the famous Ar. Ma Yansong Founder of MAD architects from the same soil. People have described the structure as a 'frozen wave' depicting its slender size and sparkling appearance in the midst of the city. While the social and cultural implications of MAD's new museum are worth pondering, the very minimal, abstract object demands immediate attention. Set against the backdrop of a Chinese new town or set almost anywhere on Earth, for that matter the shiny twisting tubular form makes a strong statement. The 200m-long building is designed to resemble icicle or frozen fluid inspired by the local winter landscape. The different exhibition spaces of each museum are connected by an entrance lobby in the centre.
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Beijing-based MAD Architects is known for its aesthetic that incorporates community sensibilities, ecological considerations and futuristic designs. The China Sculpture Museum is a testament to this philosophy with its sprawling 1,300 square-meters that flows harmoniously into its surroundings like the neighboring Songhua River. MAD Architects has evolved a design concept for the new museum, where a contrast between the elegance of nature and the speed of daily life is beautifully enacted. The dynamic and continuous form of the museum reflects and explores the relation between the building and the environment. Described by the architect it has the shape of ice and water, an appropriate image for the museum’s frigid locale. Three skylights and a handful of doors and windows are the only breaks in the streamlined form.
Design Philosophy
The long and sleek design of the museum was conceptualized based on the purpose of the museum. "The wood was an inspiration to develop the design concept of the structure, since the museum is a place of wooden artistic works implication. Located at a very prominent site among the other structures in the region of Harbin, this wooden significant structure was designed in such a way to draw the attention of the people. Based on its surrounded locations, the design of the structure was enacted to coils itself into the urban domain and stretches wide, opening its doors to welcome guests in the icy city of Harbin, China," says Ar. Ma Yansong.
Interiors
The interior of the museum has also been designed to complement the fluid form of the exterior. The circulation flows are designed to be uninterrupted between two exhibition spaces, which are linked by a central entrance. A host of skylights are incorporated to flood the interior with ample daylight. Drenched in natural light, galleries create optimum viewing conditions and scenic moments in and around the building.
Steel-plated facade
The glittering facade is the radical part of the structure in the midst of the region. The Inhabit group was involved in the whole process of designing the façade. The architect has given a similar touch of the wooden contrast and color complexion to the façade, resembling it like a gnarled piece of wood. The twisted stainless steel cladding, rolled tubular three-dimensional sub-frame, six-dimensional adjustment of fixing brackets, cold bent aluminum standing seam, thermally and acoustically insulated, internal drainage systems. The polished steel-plated exterior of the museum measures 200 meters in length and is a lustrous silvery beacon shining amidst a congested neighborhood filled with residential complexes.
The metallic covering mirrors the native landscape and reflects the changing light, thus synchronizing the rhythms of nature with its advanced technological visions of contemporary architecture. The sturdy walls are built to minimize heat loss while the pretzel-shaped patterns of the skylights contribute texture to the surface and luminosity to the interior. Visitors will enter the structure through an arced opening marking the trough of a wave that flows across the façade. The museum’s façade is the color of a thunderbolt, which is designed to exhibit carvings, paintings and installations from across this subarctic region of China, where winter never seems to end.
Structure
MAD Architects did retain the museum's sectional configuration, with a central entrance dividing two storeys of exhibitions of wood sculptures from three storeys of paintings of snow and ice-covered landscapes. "Even though the outcome is not clear on the exact nature of the collections, with few new museums in China designed with specific art in mind. But later they had to change their ideas, because it was just an experimental work when they had put something into the building, they had to think on its result and performance. There seems much more room for change in the singular volume of the China Wood Sculpture Museum than in much new building stock in China. It will be interesting to see how the potential that the museum offers is realized," explains Ar. Yansong.
Significance of the Museum
Inside the main entrance of the museum, curved walls spiral upwards allows the natural illumination of the structure from the skylights to diffuse throughout the passages. Two connected exhibition halls permit fluid navigation from gallery to gallery, and concave openings enhance visual radiance between the two levels of this 21 meter high structure. The majority of the art displayed is in the form of wood sculptures and the glass loops of the edifice resemble the gnarled knots of branches of a tree, which builds upon the synergy and style of the architectural design. The museum also showcases paintings that feature the beauty and spark of the ice and snow of the local winter scenery, once again reinforcing the dialogue between the outside environment and the inside realm.
Appearing so evident amidst a thriving metropolitan district of Harbin, China, spanning 200 meters in length, the China Wood Sculpture Museum sits as a location anomaly, seemingly out of place, surrounded by a densely populated Chinese-style neighborhood and residential complexes. Despite of numerous criticisms on the design philosophy of the structure, the China Wood Sculpture has created a sturdy impression on the minds of the Harbin public.
MAD Architects, Beijing, China
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Founded in 2004 by young Chinese architect Ma Yansong, MAD Architects is a global architecture firm committed to develop futuristic yet sustainable, organic yet technologically advanced architectures based on contemporary interpretation of the eastern spirit of nature. With more than 80 architects from all over the world, MAD Architects was named one of the "Top 10 most innovative companies in China".
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Globally recognized as a creative architect pioneer, founding principal Ma Yansong is a key player in leading the worldwide dialogue in architecture. Ma was named one of the "10 Creative People in Architecture" and "Young Global Leader (YGL)" by World Economic Forum (Davos Forum) in 2014. He also received the prestigious "International Fellowship" from Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2011.
Always holding the vision to create a new balance among individuals, the city and the environment through new forms of architecture, MAD Architects was the first China-based architecture firm ever to win a global competition. In 2006, the firm won the design competition for a residential tower, which was later known as "Marilyn Monroe Towers" in Mississauga, Canada. The project was awarded "the Best Tall Building Americas 2012" by Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), and No.1 in the "Skyscraper Awards 2013" by EMPORIS.
MAD has been commissioned by clients of various backgrounds for cultural, urban, residential projects across the globe. Current ongoing urban projects include Chaoyang Park Plaza, a mixed-use urban complex project located in the new CBD of Beijing; Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center, a city-scale urban development of approximate 600,000sqm floor area in total; Taiping Lake Apartment in Huangshan Mountain Village, a master planning plus architecture design project with 450,000sqm site area. MAD’s signature cultural projects include Harbin Cultural Island (currently under construction), Pingtan Art Museum (in design development stage,) Ordos Museum (completed in 2011,) and China Wood Sculpture Museum (completed in 2011.)
Fact sheet
Location: Harbin, China
Site Area: 9,788 sqm
Building Area: 18,110 sqm
Building Height: 21 m
Director in Charge: Ma Yansong, Dang Qun
Project Leader: Daniel Gillen
Design Team: Bas van Wylick, Huang Wei, Liu Weiwei, Diego Perez, Yu Kui, Jordan Kanter, Tang Liu, Shin Park, Mao Beihong, Julian Sattler, Nickolas Urano, M. Alejandra Obregon, Alejandro Gonzalez, Gus Chan3
Associate Engineers: The Architectural Design and Research Institute of Harbin Institute of Technology
Curtain Wall Consultant: Inhabit Group
Panel optimization: Gehry Technologies
Steel Structure Contractor: Zhejiang Jing Gong Steel Structure Co. Ltd