OPEN Architecture has shared their competition scheme for Shenzhen Maritime Museum, a project for a marine education center by the ocean in China. Dubbed the Icebergs and the Sea, the proposed museum is designed to be like an organic element of nature. Six glass ‘icebergs’ arise from the subtropical coast to raise awareness of global warming and marine environmental protection.
Icebergs were chosen to "ring an alarm bell: the impact of melting ice caps at the poles may not be that far away from our everyday life!" OPEN's proposal was one of the three winning schemes chosen by a jury panel from 15 prominent international architectural teams. The Maritime Museum is one of Shenzhen's "Ten New Major Cultural Facilities" and a new cultural landmark.
Taking coastal ecology as the point of departure, OPEN's scheme replaces the tall sea dike with a soft zone of defense in between two layers of seawalls at different heights. As the team explains, this in-between zone will be occupied by restored mangrove wetland, a natural protective barrier which also serves as habitat for marine life and migrating birds. The main exhibition space is an expansive and tall floor allowing for maximum flexibility. In turn, the exhibition rooms can be serviced by a logistics corridor loop.
A glacier-like, sloping volume would house the research, office and storage components of the museum. Naturally filtered water drawn from the mangrove wetland runs down the slopping roof, gets further filtration by the roots of plants, and finally enters the Inland Sea pond. Five double-layered glass iceberg-like volumes rise from the Inland Sea which house the main public programs: lobby, theater, library, and children's education, while providing visitors the sense of orientation and places to rest. Finally, one Iceberg ‘drifts’ away into the ocean with a dome theater inside.
News via Open Architecture
