We recently featured Preston Scott Cohen‘s Nanjing Performing Arts Center and, now, we share his winning competition proposal for the Taiyuan Museum of Art. Currently under construction, the building’s strong dynamic form is a geometric spin on the agricultural landscapes native to the Shanxi Province. The tessellated surfaces respond to contemporary technologies for controlling natural and artificial light, in addition to producing unexpected spatial conditions as the user circulates through and around the building.
More images and more about the project after the break.
Update: High res version of the drawings have been added.
“The guiding premise of the project is the need to organize the museum according to a dialectic of discontinuity and continuity. The building produces the impression of a unified sequence of spaces while at the same time giving visitors the freedom either to follow a path that is clearly defined by the architecture or to skip from one gallery to another in a non-linear fashion,” explained the architects.
The structure wraps green areas as a way to blend the exterior with the man-made. These courtyards offer the opportunity to manage rainwater for the purpose of irrigating the surrounding landscape. Photovoltaics will be embedded in glass, as a means to reduce energy consumption by making use of a wide range of possible glass technologies .
Client: Taiyuan City Government Total Area: 40,500 m2 Construction Budget: RMB 200,000,000 Winner of the international competition Project Schedule: 2007-2010 Project Team: Preston Scott Cohen (architectural design); Amit Nemlich (planning); Collin Gardner, Hao Ruan, Joshua Dannenberg (design assistants, modeling, renderings); Yair Keshet(model) Project Consultants: Architecture Design and Research Institute of South East University
