Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition

Our proposal for the new Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition in Shenzhen is based on a three-fold spatial concept. Firstly the MOCAPE becomes a meeting place for art and urban architecture with an intense and international atmosphere. Secondly the proposal is based on transformability. We suggest a rich spatial structure, which allows the most open and flexible organization for exhibitions and research for the future of this significant cultural centre. Thirdly the proposal gives importance to a strong public attractor situated in the centre of Shenzhen.

The new MOCAPE establishes a new node between sites of attraction, like the City Library, the Opera House, the Youth Activity Hall (YAH), and the Central Bookstore. It serves as a further significant landmark for the Civic Centre of Shenzhen. As a special attraction, there are several gardens in the outer areas of the museum. These gardens visualize the unchanged cycles of nature and the fact that human beings are still subject to real time.

The MOCAPE acts like a theatre loge for the courtyard park, which represents the stage. At the same time, when you arrive from the park the image is reversed - The moving visitors on the loop become the stage - the park the auditorium.

The new MOCAPE underlines its character as artificial object in its urban environment. The built structure of our proposal intertwines landscape and enclosures. It will serve as a frame and pedestal, for objects, drawings, paintings and new media. As pure square in plan it represents a simple form from the distance, indicating the inner complexity of the trajectory through its numerous openings in the facade. Together with the special appearance of its galleries it provides a rich jewellery character, especially at night.

The roof landscape on the top of the museum rises up to the sky and functions as a billboard. Cut outs in the roof function as outdoor terraces and windows into the museum.

Our proposal uses an urban model to organize the museum. The inside of the museum, an infinite street - the loop, is the continuation of the outside, the city. You can compare it with walking through the streets of an art district, where you enter a gallery, return to the street after some meditating time and some further steps and the thoughtful view into the nearby park you find another interesting exhibition. In the new MOCAPE even the street displays valuable artwork.

The visitor’s movement becomes the leitmotiv for the spatial organization of the museum. Circulation equals exhibition. Similar to a discovery landscape the visitor experiences contemporary art and urban architecture (planning exhibition) parallel in time. The continuous and interweaving loop allows a chronological experience as well as unexpected relations.