Nieto Sobejano

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos awarded 1st Prize in the International Architectural Competition for the new Guangzhou Science Museum (China).

16.06.2015

 
The jury of the international competition for the new design of the Science Museum in Guangzhou has awarded the 1st prize to Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos (Madrid-Berlin). The project is located in a prominent location in the south bank of the Pearl River, next to the Canton Tower, in close relationship with the Lingnan Park. In the adjacent plot, the 1st Prize for the Guangzhou Museum was awarded to gmp Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners. Both major museum projects form part of a new cultural hub, “Three Museums - One Square”, which includes the new Art Gallery by Thomas Herzog Architekten, conceived to significantly transform the new uran center of China’s third-largest city. The Municiality of Guangzhou, organizer of the competition, invited following architects to participate:

Guangzhou Science Museum
-Atelier FCJZ with Shenzhen A+E Design
-Architecture Design and Research Institute of South China University of Technology
-MAD Architects
-MLA+ B.V. with NorthernLight
-Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos
-Henn GmbH with Guangzhou Design Institute
-Steven Holl Architects
-China Architecture Design & Research Group + Nicholas Grimshaw and Buro Happold

Guangzhou Museum
-Beijing Institute of Architectural Design with Bjarke Ingels Group
-Bernard Tschumi Architects
-gmp Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners
-Guangzhou Hanhua Architects + Engineers
-Lacaton & Vassal Architects
-Miralles Tagliabue EMBT with CITIC arch Design
-TFP Farrells
-Wilcoter (Shanghai) Architecture and Planning Design

The winning proposal by Nieto Sobejano, is based on an agrupation of nine volumes which are conceived as a flexible sequence of large scale “ceramic vases”. The functional program, with a total area of 80.000 m2 includes exhibition halls, temporary expositions, science and technology theaters, auditoriums, and a rooftop garden with views towards the city skyline and the Lignan Park. The architectural concept, born of a simple additive process, admits multiple variations of a limited number of elements generating a complex space out of a combinatorial system. The new Science Museum will be, together with the adjoining Guangzhou Museum and the Art Gallery, a landmark in the new urban axis, not only for its ambitious programme for the popularization of science, but also for its unusual spatial conception, which proposes a dialogue between the memory and historical tradition of the place and a state of the art technological and museographic approach.