From the street level, it looks like an alien ship has just landed on earth. With its shiny smooth metallic skin and futuristic form, it is not hard to see why. However, all the nerds out there don’t get too excited just yet, this is just another mind-boggling building coming out of China!
With a footprint of 420,000 square feet, the new branch of the Shanghai Astronomy Museum is the largest museum of its kind in the world. The designer Ennead utilises scale, form and the manipulation of light to create an ‘immersive’ environment so that visitor can establish relationship with their surrounding and subsequently the universe.
Architecturally speaking, this building is extraordinary in the sense it is designed without any straight lines nor right angles, mimicking the dynamic geometry of the universe. Elipse instead of circle are mostly used to create a dynamic as opposed to static perception throughout the building. This again is echoing the universe which is constantly moving such as the rotation of the earth and the gravitational force of all the planets. There are three major components to this building namely – the Oculus, Inverted Dome and Sphere. These are actually astronomical instruments that track the sun, moon and stars.
Living in the modern concrete jungle, we have gradually lost our senses to our immediate environment. Just ask yourself, how often do you cast aside your mobile phones and simply enjoy the beauty of the ever changing sky that is so vast that it encompasses the entire planet? People nowadays spend more time looking down onto their phones than looking up. If not careful, human may soon evolved into a species with our head pointing downward to the ground. The idea of the Shanghai Astronomy Museum acknowledges this issue and set to refocus our attention back to the sky through the visit of this magnificent building.
There are multiple locations within this vast building that provide glimpses of our magnificent sky for visitors to enjoy. The daylight that enters into the building also create an optical illusion whereby parts of the building seem to be defying gravity and floating in space.
