Text description provided by the architects. The Zhejiang Art Museum boasts a superb natural environment, nestled comfortably near the banks of the beautiful West Lake at the foot of the verdant Yuhuang Mountain.

The museum’s design sought to find the synesthesia between Chinese calligraphy, ink paintings, the traditional architecture of the wider Jiangnan region (south of the Yangtze River), and classical Western sculpture, so as to achieve a harmony and unity of the natural and human environments, with modern aesthetic ideas.

Panorama. Image

elevations

Main entrance. Image

The mass of the architecture is spread out along the shape of the mountain and extends gradually to the lake so that the rhythmic rising and falling profile of the building stretches in concert with the mountain, and merges into the background of the natural environment.

Linear light corridor. Image

The black-colored roof components stand in contrast to the pale-white wall, and the construction technique of using multiple alternating sloping crests seems to subtly express Jiangnan architectural features, in a delicate space between likeness and unlikeness, where the cultural quality and meaning of Jiangnan culture is unveiled as if in an ink painting.

Interior views. Image

ground floor plan

Entrance Garden. Image

Meanwhile, the structure still manages to retain an aesthetic sense of modernity and sculpturalism by using steel, hollow laminated glass, stone, and other modern materials; by applying modern techniques; and through the use of the transitional pyramidal roofs in alternating patterns, gently clashing with the horizontal blocks of the architecture.

sunken plaza. Image

The museum is located between Yuhuang Mountains and West Lake with scattered landscapes; the museum is built by people, yet it looks like a splendid work of nature.

Poised like a modern ink painting that has been accomplished with a single stroke, the Zhejiang Art Museum expresses the modern Chinese aesthetic within the narrative context of Jiangnan’s misty rain scenery.

Illuminated central hall. Image

White walls, black tiles and interlaced slant roofs make a color contrast with black and white, showing a kind of Chinese southern cultural charm.

Modern materials and techniques, and a modern aesthetic orientation serve to express the individual cultural characteristics of Jiangnan architecture.

Roof details. Image

Jiangnan in misty rain–The artists sought for a synthesis of Chinese calligraphy, ink paintings, sloping crests, the local natural environment, and Western abstract sculpture.

Hills shrouded in mist: both the poetic and picturesque are united through the modern Chinese aesthetic ideal.

Modern materials and techniques and a modern aesthetic orientation serve to express the individual cultural characteristics of Jiangnan architecture. Image © Li Yao

• Architects

  CCTN Design

• Location

  138 Nanshan Rd, NanShan Lu WenHua YiShu XiuXian TeSeJie, Xihu Qu, Hangzhou Shi, Zhejiang Sheng, China

• Category

  Museums & Exhibit

• Lead Architects

  Taining Cheng

• Design Team

  Bolin Qian, Dapeng Wang, Mao’en Zheng, Yang Hu, Li Guo, Jian Wu, Yuantao Chen

• Area

  31550.0 m2

• Project Year

  2008

• Photographs

  Li Yao, CCTN Design