Rotterdam architects MVRDV have just won the competition for the Comic and Animation Museum CCAM in the Eastern Chinese metropolis of Hangzhou.
For their design the planners were inspired by modern comic strip esthetics and created a self-explanatory ensemble of eight over-sized speech bubbles looking like a gigantic dinosaur’s nest at first glance. However, no primeval saurians are bred here. Instead, the eight volumes are connected to form a futuristic museum complex with a floor space of 32,000 square meters. A well-made detail is the concrete façade, arranged in a relief-like manner in cooperation with graphic design bureau JongeMeesters from Amsterdam, with its round windows, which are explicitly supposed to remind of Chinese vases due to their monochrome white surface. To make the association with over-sized 3D-speech bubbles even more obvious, text is intended to be projected onto the façade.
For their design the planners were inspired by modern comic strip esthetics and created a self-explanatory ensemble of eight over-sized speech bubbles looking like a gigantic dinosaur’s nest at first glance. However, no primeval saurians are bred here. Instead, the eight volumes are connected to form a futuristic museum complex with a floor space of 32,000 square meters. A well-made detail is the concrete façade, arranged in a relief-like manner in cooperation with graphic design bureau JongeMeesters from Amsterdam, with its round windows, which are explicitly supposed to remind of Chinese vases due to their monochrome white surface. To make the association with over-sized 3D-speech bubbles even more obvious, text is intended to be projected onto the façade.
Flowing spatial Structure
Just as spectacular as the shell is also the interior, a box-in-box construction flowing into each other and each opened up in a spiral manner and via large escalators. Apart from space for the museum’s own exhibits as well as for temporary exhibitions, MVRDV also plan to build three movie theaters and a conventional theater with all in all 1,111 seats, a large comic book library, rooms for museum education as well as a large lobby. The transition areas between the individual bubbles are going to provide special spatial perspectives and insights. In addition to the spatial program inside the museum, plans exist for a public plaza, an expo center for trade fairs and festivals as well as numerous artificial islands in the adjacent lake.
Apart from the aerodynamic shape, the use of thermal heat, natural ventilation and adiabatic cooling for a good energy efficiency of the CCAM are parts of the design. Construction works of the 90 million Euro building are supposed to start next year.
Avant-garde Space Ball
MVRDV have often proved their soft spot for extravagant shapes. Just as radical as with the Dutch Expo pavilion in Hanover back then, the architects use the CCAM to once again push the limits of esthetics and of what’s possible in terms of statics by placing landscape layers on top of each other. However, the inspiration they got from the biomorphic speech bubbles from the UFO-like “Love Bubbles” from the 1960s are so obvious that their design is full of retro charm when looked at with a Westerner’s eye. In China, where “Love and Peace” hasn’t spread that far yet, the new Comic and Animation Museum will certainly look as if from another planet. And maybe bring along some new ways of thinking. Anything’s possible in comic books, after all.
Constructor: Hangzhou Urban Planning Bureau, China
Architect: MVRDV, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Begin of construction works: 2012
Size: GFA: 32,000 m²
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