The project of the Chinese National Museum in Beijing by Jean Nouvel

The French studio of Jean Nouvel won the NAMOC project (China National Art Museum in Beijing) in an international competition last year, when it teamed up with the local studio BAID (Beijing Institute of Architecture Design) and beat other architectural stars. After a year of work, Nouvel presented an updated version in September that still retains the form of an immaterial calligraphic drawing. The art institute, covering an area of over 130,000 m², provides shelter for important historical collections as well as permanent exhibitions of contemporary art, but also galleries with temporary exhibitions, educational processes, and research institutions. Jean Nouvel consciously works with an “unfinished image” and a “weightless state.” In the museum, which resembles a melting ice cube in shape, Nouvel carves a delicate ornament through which light enters covered halls lush with vegetation. The museum is entered under a golden-blue canopy, the main gallery space is shaped by a heterogeneous mix of variously sized halls, and the entire museum culminates in an ascent to a rooftop terrace with a fountain.