JIAMING MUSEUM

Jiaming Museum is a competition for a gallery space in Tianjin, China. The gallery has multiple functions: it is housed in a museum and will serve as a sales room and showroom for luxury villas that will be built in that area. The space will constantly update and adapt for different functions. Due to the museum's simple and elegant exterior, the sensation of movement is intensified as one enters the gallery. The gallery space maintains a clear interior volume which can be submitted to changes--the interior can be perceived as a uniform space as well as a poly-centered space where different functions, while still preserving an inviting atmosphere, are identified under the petal shaped suspended canopies. These soft forms wrap around the space and create irregular geometries that give more dynamism to the circulation as we walk through. The shapes serve not only as esthetic elements but they can be used for different exhibitions as a projecting surface and thus giving the space a whole new rhythm. The placement of soft irregular shapes creates a flowing interior garden that has a seamless connection to the landscape on the outside. The forms penetrate the space in a natural way from both directions--going from the inside to the outside and vice versa. This gives the impression that it was not the space itself that was designed but the experience of passing through. The relationship between these fluid forms and the visitors is explored through the scale, equilibrium, weight, and tension. The transition from inside to outside is achieved in a very gentle way, never as a sequence of separated spaces but always as a series of framed.