MAD clads bulbous science museum with silver-toned polymer panels in China
Shiny panels envelop the spiralling structure of the Hainan Science Museum, which has been completed by architecture studio MAD in Haikou, China.
Perched on a verdant site near the city's Wuyuan River National Wetland Park, the museum houses 46,528 square metres of public space, including four exhibition floors connected by a single, spiralling walkway.
The museum was conceived by MAD to be closer to a public library than a destination landmark, where local schools and residents can explore science, technology and nature.
Combining these themes into a single building, studio founder Ma Yansong designed the series of ring-shaped galleries as open-plan spaces that "flow into one another rather than sit behind separate doors".
"I wanted the project to be built on the idea of flow and chaos – space, function, and knowledge to flow into one another, freely," Yansong said.
"Different subjects should connect, overlap, and stay open," he continued.
"If artificial intelligence can already answer almost any question, a science museum's job is no longer to deliver facts. It is to teach children how to ask them."
At the museum's base, a winding canopy punctuated with rounded openings shelters a series of glass-walled public spaces at ground level.
These include an amphitheatre, cinema, temporary exhibition space and sunken courtyard area, which are connected by a covered walkway and flanked at one end by a reflecting pool.
A planetarium is held within a separate rounded volume, complete with a domed roof that emerges beyond the canopy.
Rising from the base, the museum's bulbous structure is clad with 843 shiny fibre-reinforced polymer panels and complete with slim, expansive openings that follow the building's form.
Inside, the programme is arranged around a five-storey atrium that crowns the ground-floor lobby with a circular glass skylight and draws daylight into the upper floors.
Three structural concrete cores flank the central atrium and facilitate circulation while eliminating the need for columns at ground level and on the four exhibition floors.
Distinct themes define each of the exhibition floors, which transition from deep space and the ocean to Hainan's rainforests and tropical agriculture.
The museum sits on the city's seafront alongside MAD's Cloudscape of Haikou, a sinuous library and waystation cast in white concrete.
Elsewhere, the studio has recently completed the Lishui Airport in China modelled on "mist-covered hills" and revealed images of its "dream-like" Lucas Museum of Narrative Art nearing completion in LA.
The photography is by Arch-Exist.
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