The new West Bund Art Museum is a prominent building of the masterplan for the West Bund of Shanghai. The aim of the design is to create a special place at the riverside where visitors can visit a museum and also enjoy the riverside and the views to downtown Shanghai. Due to its situation as a solitaire at the north most point where the road and the river diverge to form a generous green park, the museum will be the prime cultural entity that visitors encounter when coming to the Xuhui Riverside District via the Shanghai Corniche. The building will have a strong relationship to its surroundings.
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Three exhibition gallery volumes approximately 18m tall define the building massing on the North, West and South sides of the site. The exhibition galleries are stacked and the heights are configured to provide clerestory lighting to the lower level galleries, while the upper level galleries are mainly top lit. In addition, each upper level gallery contains an expansive view window providing views to downtown Shanghai, the local Huangpu river bank, and the park to the south.
The museum is positioned on the outer edges of the site on these three sides to create a unique space at the riverside. This central area of the building contains 3 main space defining elements; a three storey lobby with a central triple-height atrium, a single storey long café pavilion located along the river’s edge with a rooftop viewing terrace connecting the upper lobby with the riverside, and a landscaped sunken courtyard connecting the underground museum level with the riverside terrace and promenade.
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Project start: 2013
Completion due: 2019
Gross floor area: 24000 m2
Client: Shanghai West Bund Development Group Co., Ltd.
Architect: David Chipperfield Architects Berlin, Shanghai
Partners: Alexander Schwarz, Mark Randel, Martin Reichert, Libin Chen
Project Architects: Diana Schaffrannek, Chuxiao Li, Haishan Li
Contact architect: Shanghai Urban Architectural Design Co., Ltd.
Landscape architect: Levin Monsigny Gesellschaft von Landschaftsarchitekten
Structure consultant: Arup
Structure engineer: Shanghai Urban Architectural Design Co., Ltd.
Facade consultant: Drees & Sommer Engineering Consulating (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
Services consultant: WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff Engineering Services
Services engineer: Shanghai Urban Architectural Design Co., Ltd.
