Hainan Art Museum
A museum in Hainan has the potential to be unique, not only for the warm climate that the island enjoys all year round, but also due to the special characteristics of the site location. Through a linear green space, the site for the Hainan Museum of Art connects to a network of parks that will permeate through the city, reaching the river and the coastline.
Although most museums require a large part of their spaces to be relatively introverted for functional reasons, the ambition of the design is to achieve this functionality with an extroverted and welcoming architecture. In this way, both the architecture and the public space express the open and civic character of the building. The ambition is to offer visitors different ways to experience art, fostering a stronger relationship between art spaces and nature. Spaces that are usually limited to staff such as art storage warehouses can be opened to the public while other activities that go beyond art appreciation can turn the museum into a social place for gathering.
The design is centered on the creation of a garden with a strong civic and public presence while contributing to the network of surrounding urban green spaces. The volumetric concept is focused on establishing a strong and meaningful relationship between the museum and the garden. Rather than consolidating the museum into a single building and relying on formal approaches to make the building iconic and attractive, the design is focused on creating an attractive museum in terms of visitor experience.
The concept of the proposal is to fragment the required program into different volumes that are placed throughout the site, defining garden spaces of varying sizes and qualities. The volumes are all linked to provide a covered and shaded route throughout the entire museum. In this way, the visitor experience is intrinsically related to the garden while the architecture of the volumes is independent enough to respond to the functional requirements of the museum.
