The architect studio behind a new science and technology museum in the Chinese island province of Hainan, in the South China Sea, has revealed the latest construction photos of the project that show the innovative design coming to life.
The brainchild of 20-year-old global design practice, MAD Architects, the 46,000-square-metre building is currently being clad with fibreglass-reinforced plastic, the pictures show. A silvery coloured façade “mimics the upward movement of warm air” of an updraft, the architects say, with a coiling biomorphic form that wraps around the circular construction, leading the eye upwards.
Our Hainan Science Museum is nearing completion, with the main structure is up. We are on schedule for completion in 2025. This museum will be a great addition to Haikou.#MADarchitects #MaYansong #HainanScienceMuseum #ConstructionUpdate #HaikouAttractions #NewMuseum #MAD20 pic.twitter.com/rNljTR31Wg
— MAD Architects (@madarchitects_) May 28, 2024
Working with climate and landscape
Hainan is a popular tourist destination which has long had convenient visa-on-arrival arrangements in place. It has a tropical climate, but in January and February thick fog envelops the north of the island where the museum will sit in Haikou, causing walls in domestic homes to weep with condensation. The island is also in the path of typhoons. To cope with the humid conditions, open seams and water-guiding grooves have been incorporated into the design.
The six-storey building works with its surroundings in other ways too, its “fluid, soft shapes” helping it to blend in while creating a distinctive landmark that avoids using unnecessary materials and resources, the façade connected to its core, floor plates and main structure for efficiency.
The next stages of the project will see the building’s curtain wall and landscaping which are slated for completion this month (June 2024). The museum will have taken around five years from its initial design phase to completion, when it opens its doors in 2025.
Technology and science meet nature
Billed as a place where “technology and science meet nature”, the museum is “about education and imagining the future,” MAD founder Ma Yansong has said. It will boast spaces for younger children on the second and third floors, with older children and adult experiences starting with an elevator to the top floor and a descent via a gently inclined central ramp that coils like DNA through a central atrium washed in natural light from a skylight. On the way they will be able to gaze out at lushly planted landscaping and gallery spaces.
The updraft-resembling Hainan Science and Technology museum inscribes itself in the developing tourist offer of Hainan, alongside another MAD design, a library with an organic curved form overlooking the coast, and 14 other buildings that are part of Hainan’s so-called Cloudscape.
