In the past two decades, our museums have become larger and larger; they have now reached a scale at which they can no longer be understood as (large) buildings, but only as (small) cities. Given the area that it covers, the vast number of artworks it will house, the numbers of visitors it will inevitably attract, the turnover of exhibitions it will have to accommodate, NAMOC can be the first museum in the world based on this new paradigm, the first museum conceived as a small city.

OMA has designed in the center of Beijing a proposal for 'NAMoC', the National Art Museum of China. Accommodating the growing scale of museums over the past 20 years, the encapsulating 'large building' is crossing over into 
a new paradigm, instead becoming viewed as a 'small city'. Covering a large area and containing a vast amount of art work 
with a high turnover rate of exhibitions, this will become the first example of this new type of experience. Intermingling grassroots
and official sectors, the complex has a central structure encompassed by a periphery with an chinese and international district,
modern and historical areas and both commercial and government neighborhoods. Over time, individual zones can be redefined, 
renovated or replaced to accommodate inevitable change.

In this way, it can incorporate a significant number of breakthroughs, revolutionizing the way in which the museum works today. Like a city, it could mix sectors, 'official' and grassroots, it could have a centre and a periphery, a Chinese and an international district, modern and historical areas, commercial and 'government' neighbourhoods. Like a city, individual sections need not be permanent; areas can be redefined, renovated, or even replaced, without compromising the whole.

To plan NAMOC as a city does not mean that it cannot offer the intimacy that remains the essence of the museum experience: like any city, its individual parts can be small, humane… But like a city, it will offer a degree of variety that will be unique for a single museum. Part of it will be public, other parts could be commercial…

The architecture of the main plinth offers a range of classical, orthogonal museum spaces, to more contemporary, freer forms. Like any city, circulation can be efficient and direct – for larger groups – or meandering and individual. The story of Chinese art can be told, or discovered. The main circulation of the city is based on a five-pointed star that leads from the multiple entry points on the periphery to the centre. Here, the star connects to the 'lantern', a multistory stack of platforms, wrapped in a red skin, on which temporary exhibitions and events are arranged with the smooth efficiency of a convention centre. Although its internal organization is rational, the elastic skin stretched around the metallic frame makes it look like a mystery…

The Lantern is the three-dimensional emblem of NAMOC; a single tangential axis relates the Lantern to the Bird's Nest. In contrast to the intricacy of the city, the six main floors of the Lantern offer wide open spaces, so that the architecture does not interfere with the organization of the exhibitions or events.

In the thickness of the floors, offices, library, research and other services are accommodated; in the 'City' they are concentrated on the five arms of the star.

Conceptually, the two halves of NAMOC – 'City' and Lantern – are complementary: like the city today, they offer radically different experiences: the small scale, intricate condition of the traditional urban fabric of China, and the contemporary era of radical modernization...

CREDITS:

Project: Competition for New National Art Museum of China.
Status: Competition.
First phase: 2010/11.
Client: National Art Museum of China.
Location: New cultural district in olympic green, Beijing. China.
Site: 30,000 m²
Program: 128,000m2 for permanent collection and temporary exhibition spaces.
Partners in charge: Rem Koolhaas, Shohei Shigematsu, David Gianotten.
Project architect: Alessandro de Santis.
Team: Jing Chen, Midori Hasuike, Martin Hejl, Jinman Jo, Anu Leinonen, Adrienne Lau, Kostya Miroshnychenko, Pietro Pagliaro, Ippolito Pestellini, Jue Qiu, Yanfei Shui, Espen Vatn, Yu Wang, James Westcott, Junjie Yan, Nurdan Yakup, Dongmei Yao, Haohao Zhu.
Animation art direction: Martin Hejl.
Engineering: Arup.
Animation: Embryo.
Imagery: Robota.
Model: Rj Models.

 

 

Read more
Read less

More information

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

Read more

Rem Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam in 1944. He began his career as a journalist, working for the Haagse Post, and as a set-designer in the Netherlands and Hollywood. He beganHe frequented the Architectural Association School in London and studied with Oswald Mathias Ungers at Cornell University. In 1978, he wrote Delirious New York: a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan, which has become a classic of contemporary architectural theory. In 1975 – together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp – he founded OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture).

The most important works by Koolhaas and OMA, from its foundation until the mid-1990s, include the Netherlands Dance Theatre at The Hague, the Nexus Housing at Fukuoka in Japan, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Grand Palais of Euralille and Lille, the Villa dall’Ava, the Très Grande Bibliothèque, the Jussieu library in Paris, the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Seattle Public Library.

Together with Koolhaas’s reflections on contemporary society, these buildings appear in his second book, S,M,L,XL (1995), a volume of 1376 pages written as though it were a “novel about architecture”. Published in collaboration with the Canadian graphic designer, Bruce Mau, the book contains essays, manifestos, cartoons and travel diaries.

In 2005, with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman, he was the founder to the prestigious Volume magazine, the result of a collaboration with Archis (Amsterdam), AMO and C-lab (Columbia University NY).

His built work includes the Qatar National Library and the Qatar Foundation Headquarters (2018), Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris (2018), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015/2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), the headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing (2012), Casa da Musica in Porto (2005), Seattle Central Library (2004), and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003). Current projects include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, a new building for Axel Springer in Berlin, and the Factory in Manchester.

Koolhaas directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and is a professor at Harvard University, where he directs The Project on the City, a research programme on changes in urban conditions around the world. This programme has conducted research on the delta of the Pearl River in China (entitled Great Leap Forward) and on consumer society (The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping). Taschen Verlag has published the results. Now is preparing a major exhibition for the Guggenheim museum to open in 2019 entitled Countryside: Future of the World.

Among the awards he has won in recent years, we mention here the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000), the Praemium Imperiale (2003), the Royal Gold Medal (2004) and the Mies Van Der Rohe prize (2005). In 2008, Time mentioned him among the 100 most influential people of the planet.

Read more
Published on: October 10, 2012
Cite: "OMA: Proposal for NAMoC in Beijing" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/oma-proposal-namoc-beijing> ISSN 1139-6415
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...