Hou Liang Architecture

Time: 2004.08

Location: Ningbo,China

Client: Ningbo science and technology association

Key dimensions: m2

Cost: 300,000,000 RMB 

Competition:International design competition short listed

If the purpose of the science is to improve the quality of people’s life condition, what will be the architecture that can make better life?

With the tremendous speed of the development of the science, people are more and more conscious of that only the sustainable development strategy would lead us to the optimistic future. So only energy-concerned building is the most science-conscious architecture. A Chinese saying, ‘better cooling under a big tree.’ So if the building itself is a big tree, in the hot summer, the space under the building can be a cooler place for public use, such as leisure°¢temporary exhibitions and events. Thus, this open urban space can provide reasonable cooler amenity without air-conditioning. In school summer holidays (from July to September) those space can be intensively used by students. In the meantime, the cost of operation and maintenance for the science museum will be greatly reduced.

In order to popularize science, the museum needs to face to the public. Instead of a symbolic sculpture, the museum is more like a city park. It welcomes the citizen from every the part of the city. The maximized surface of contact can maximized the chance of convey the knowledge of the science: Under the ‘big tree’, scales are varied, densities are changing, and the visitors can walk under it freely with their own choices. By doing this, the public space of the Ningbo science museum became a landscape of ‘forest’.