. . KunShan Urban planning museum . .
Kunshan city (Jiangsu province) has commisionned Cui Kai for the design of its urban planning museum that will start construction in 2013. Atelier 100s and BaO collaborated with Crystal CG on the interior and exhibition design of the soon to be built museum. One of the specificity of Kunshan county is that 30% of its area is actually covered by water (wetlands, lakes, rivers). It is famous worlwide for its towns built on water and its hydraulic ingenioussness. Since the whole region is built on water, we proposed the urban planning exhibition to be built on water as well.
We litterally flooded all the exhibition spaces inside the museum in order to create a very specific experience for the visitors that would circulate throughout the building on bridges. The new winding path corresponded to the linear historical sequence the curators were defining and permitted to link and unite separated halls into one continuous movement. Water and bridges also permitted us to structure the collection in each hall while defining the distances between the visitors and information, expand the range of layout possibilities, and create new type of installations utilizing floating models, submerged screens, digital or holgraphic projections on water and mechanized hydraulic appartuses. The whole exhibition was designed as one big-scale installation half-way between an amusement park's fun-palace and a very serious, calm and solemn museum-like space
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .