The Long Museum

To begin, it's not physically long, 'long' in chinese means dragon, so it's the dragon museum, which sounds way cooler. This is the second dragon museum in Shanghai. The first one designed by artist and brutalist architect Zhong Song. This one, the Long Museum West Bund, designed by Liu Yichun of Atelier Deshaus.

This is but the latest step in Shanghai's relentless push toward making itself Chinas cultural capital by 2017. Lubricated by the cities Free Trade Zone status, Shanghai is more than set to achieve this by its goal, spurred on with the which is busy transformation of the ex-industrial area, now christened the 'West Bank Media Port' featuring film studios, digital entertainment companies and new media start-ups.

The new museum concept is an attempt to capture a snapshot of the areas urban past. While the new 17,000sqm of space houses the art collections, outside the tramlines have been retained and the huge concrete silos, appear to be one of the key features of the site, if a bit awkward and ill thought out.

Anyway, forget that, No one hangs about outside in China, it's bad for your health. Inside the building, it's a insitue cast amazballs extravaganza! I like the vaulted umbrella shapes that create light scoops and show off the strong structural language of the building. These exciting geometric elevations create similarly exciting vaulted spaces with in the building. Even in light of this mastery of material, the art work is really the center piece of the gallery. Architect Liu Yichun says: ‘We want to push the viewer back to the arts itself, so that visitors can again focus on what’s inside the frame. That way, they can think about the meaning of the art.’

Read about it more in depth by some one who actually has been there, here on the Architectural Review!