Location: Datong, Shanxi Province, China
Architect: Foster+Partners
A significant new cultural destination in China, the Datong Art Museum, opened to the public in January 2022 with a special exhibition of oil paintings created by regional artists. It is one of four significant structures that make up the cultural plaza in Datong New City and is slated to develop into a new centre for the local creative industry. The gallery spaces are buried below ground and surrounded by landscaped plazas. The building’s sculptural shape has been imagined as a landscaped terrain with a sequence of interconnecting pyramids growing from below the soil. A number of areas devoted to teaching and learning, including a children’s gallery, media library, archive, and art storage facilities, complement the museum’s cultural program.
The broad structural span of the structure and the goal to create a vast, flexible column-free volume below, while mediating the smaller gallery spaces towards the edges, directly influenced the form of the roof. Curved steel plates that have been organically oxidized are used to cover the roof, which aids in water drainage and gives the surface a rich, three-dimensional appearance. The panels’ proportions are appropriate for the museum’s great scale, and their linear arrangement highlights the pyramidal shape of the roof.
