into a Science Center

Award-winning architects KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten International has won the first prize in an international competition for the new Beijing Science Center. The original building housing the Museum was opened at the same location in Beijing in 1988 and at the time was the first national science and technology museum in China. The museum building will be constructed on behalf of the Beijing Association for Science and Technology, China.

In the south and east the building opens onto a spacious public plaza, shielding the adjoining residential quarters in the north from the busy roads. At the same time the museum forecourt is not only the place where visitors arrive but also somewhere the inhabitants of the neighbouring districts can spend time. Trees and expanses of greenery create a natural transition and a visual dividing line between the exhibition building and the road.

The new building’s key element is a floating structure measuring 133.5m x 133.5m, which rises above the pedestal building at a height of around 20m. This roof is supported by numerous, extremely slender columns, which, based on the image of a bamboo grove, form a concentrated forest of columns. They create a spatial transition from the public road to the scientific exhibition area.

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