Platinum Architecture, Building and Structure Design · 2024
Shenzhen Art Museum New Venue and Library North Branch
- A' Design Award 2024 Platinum Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
- Awarded April 15, 2024
- CLIENT: Zhubo Design
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 2,986,301
- Verification code C081EE3658 · Verify this award
About Shenzhen Art Museum New Venue and Library North Branch
Shenzhen Art Museum is a cultural complex that joins an art museum and a library in a dense urban district. The two buildings are shaped like a pair of hands that enclose a shared central space. Public platforms on several levels sit between the two volumes and are sheltered by a large cantilevered roof built as a truss steel structure. A double layer curtain wall system shapes the indoor light and reduces the cooling load. Prefabricated construction was used. The complex offers a calm setting for exhibitions and cultural exchange.
Within the evolving discourse of contemporary public architecture, Zhubo Design's New Venue and Library North Branch emerges as a compelling meditation on the relationship between civic monumentality and human-scaled invitation. The building's most distinctive feature, its undulating facade of metallic panels, suggests an engagement with parametric design methodologies while simultaneously evoking older traditions of screen architecture that have long served to modulate light, air, and visual permeability in warm climates. This surface treatment transforms what could read as imposing institutional mass into a responsive membrane that appears to breathe with ambient conditions, catching and releasing light in patterns that shift throughout the day. The horizontal bands of glazing that punctuate this rhythmic skin reveal the building's interior life, their warm illumination during twilight hours serving as beacon and welcome to the surrounding urban community. The generous external staircase, occupying a significant portion of the composition, functions as more than circulation infrastructure; it operates as social condenser and transitional threshold, inviting informal gathering while ceremonially elevating the acts of cultural participation that occur within. The architects have achieved a sophisticated balance between the building's dual programmatic identities, museum and library, through unified formal language that speaks to both contemplative retreat and active civic engagement. The material palette of warm-toned metal and cool concrete establishes a dialogue between technological sophistication and grounded permanence, suggesting an institution confident in both its contemporary relevance and enduring cultural mission. Viewers might contemplate how architecture shapes our collective experience of knowledge, art, and community, and consider what role such buildings play in defining urban identity.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Chief Architect believe that large scale cultural buildings such as art museums and libraries shouldn't only be important cultural fronts of the city, but also functional places that serve the people. The poject is located in a key development plot in Shenzhen, surrounded by dense residential and office space. Therefore, the core of this project is to create a public platform and hub for cultural exchange,which can further stimulate the cultural vitality of regional public spaces in the future.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Total land area:39804.03 square metre;
Total construction area:141524.59 square metre;
Volume rate: 2.36;
Building height: 40.15;
Number of floors:6 - Tags
- Art Museum, Library, aesthetic education, Oversized cantilevered roof, three - dimensional library
- Production Technology
- The facade using a double layer curtain wall system to create different indoor space effects for two buildings, and also achieves the sustainable development goal of reducing cooling load and saving energy. The entire facade unit is fixed to the outside of the main structure of the building through the substructure.
This project is built using prefabricated construction. The cantilever roof of the art museum uses truss steel structure design. - Design Challenge
- The large cantilevered roof of the art museum covers an area of more than 5,000 square meters. The cantilever roof adopts truss steel structure design, adopts the installation mode of ground assembly and overall lifting, and a total of 17 lifters have completed the overall lifting in 48 hours.
Shenzhen Library North Branch is the first library in China to set up a large volume of intelligent three-dimensional book stacks underground, with an area of 2,600 square meters and a floor height of 22.5 meters, of which the underground depth is 16 meters. - Project Duration
- The project started in 2015 in Shenzhen and finished in 2023.
- Operation Flow
- The project have become public living rooms where people are happy to stop by. Visitors can take a break and enjoy a variety of local and international exhibitions in the cool and tranquil atrium space. The public nature of the project brings more affinity. The extensive participation of the general public has promoted the popularization of aesthetic education and the spread of culture, greatly enhanced the value of cultural venues, and better realized the designer's original intention.
- Research
- The poject is located in a key development plot in Longhua District, Shenzhen, surrounded by dense residential and office space. Therefore, the core of this project is to create a public platform and hub for cultural exchange, which can further stimulate the cultural vitality of regional public spaces in the future.How to open and share the building space and make the project related to the surrounding area has become a key issue in the planning and design of the project.
- Inspiration
- The project is located in a busy transportation hub,the design needed to create a place that conveys a sense of calm and serenity,while responding to the sense of solemnity that culture itself represents.Think of the two venues as a pair of hands that enclose the central space,creating an atmosphere of preciousness and protection.These hands also symbolize the connection between people,it brings together people from different cultural backgrounds and stimulates creativity and cultural exchange.
- Image Credits
- RAWVISION studio, Qiao Zhong
Colors of Shenzhen Art Museum New Venue and Library North Branch
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