MAD Architects has unveiled his design proposal for Hainan Science and Technology Museum Haikou City, Hainan, China. Scheduled to break ground in late August 2021 and to be completed and open by 2024, the Hainan Science and Technology Museum is the firm’s second major public project in Hainan, after the Cloudscape, inaugurated in April 2021. Merging nature and technology, the project located on the city’s west coast will become an “important science venue and a major tourist attraction for Hainan's free trade port”.
MAD Architects, led by Ma Yansong, has designed the Hainan Science and Technology Museum on Haikou’s west coast, encompassing a total area of 46,528 square meters, and featuring 27,782 square meters of above-ground facilities including permanent exhibition space, a planetarium, a giant-screen theater, and a flying theater. Surrounded by sports stadiums and a National Wetland Park, the project, once completed “will serve as a destination for the exploration of science, technology, and nature, encouraging visitors to seek inspiration from both the urban and natural setting”.
Inspired by the context and its urban and natural duality, the design, shaped like a cloud, has a rich backdrop, and is implemented in a tropical rainforest. Generating a “futuristic building that appears to emerge from the city”, with a very distinctive silver and reflective façade, the project, a "primeval rainforest, and technology of the future meet”, as the architect puts it, is in dialogue with nature. In fact, visitors entering the museum area will get to witness the building floating above the jungle.
The museum’s interior structure consists of three floor-to-ceiling cores, curved trusses, spiral ramps, and a roof, all exposed to achieve harmony between the architectural forms and structural system. A skylight in the museum’s dome bathes the spacious atrium in natural light, creating a bright and transparent environment. A spiraling, sloping exhibition space ascends from the central hall over five floors, connecting visitors across the museum. -- MAD Architects
The exhibition starts on the fifth floor with a 360-degree viewing platform. Visitors will begin by exploring the technology and space galleries before going down the ramp to the ocean and life science galleries on the fourth floor, the math and science galleries on the third floor, and the multimedia interactive experience area and children's playground on the second floor. While the interior is a permeable space of discovery, the outside is an ideal setting for learning about nature. The building itself takes on an undulating canopy that extends in order to create a space that can accommodate the public in Haikou’s humid and rainy climate, featuring a giant screen, a flying theater, a planetarium, and an observatory. Moreover, outdoor public spaces, include a crater-like sunken plaza and a reflecting pool.
Hainan Science and Technology Museum
Haikou, China
- Typology: Museum
- Building Area: 46,528 sqm
- Above ground: 27,782 sqm
- Underground: 18,746 sqm
- Principal Partners: Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, Yosuke Hayano
- Associate Partners: Kin Li, Fu Changrui, Tiffany Dahlen
- Design Team: Wang Yiding, Reem Mosleh, Sun Feifei, Alan Rodríguez Carrillo, Rozita Kashirtseva, Wu Qiaoling, Edgar Navarrete, Zhu Yuhao, Zheng Chengwen, Zhang Yaohui, Li Hui, Yang Xuebing, Dayie Wu, Zhou Haimeng, Lim Zi Han, Yin Jianfeng, Guo Xuan
- Client: Hainan Association for Science and Technology
- Client Representative: Haikou Urban Construction Group Co., Ltd
- Executive Architects: China Construction Design International (CCDI)
- Façade Consultant: RFR Shanghai
- Landscape Consultant: Earthasia Design Group
- Interior Design Consultant: China Construction Design International (CCDI)
- Lighting Consultant: Beijing Sign Lighting Industry Group
- Signage Consultant: China Construction Design International (CCDI)
- Exhibition Consultant: Tongji Architectural Design (Group) Co., Ltd.
