Museum

The project addresses the whole complex, including the future of the Velarde Palace and the Casa Oviedo-Portal. Only through such a comprehensive approach can the optimal functioning of an institution as important as the Fine Arts Museum of Asturias be guaranteed.

The art museum, situated in the west of Kunming City, is an important public building in the Cuifeng Ecological Park. The meaning of “Mountain & Sea” comes from its position, keeping away from the hustle and bustle of the city and appearing vividly on the mountain, as well as from its location at the north end of the Dianchi Lake system, with excellent landscape resources, and the city, water and mountains are all included in the sight. The strong site characteristics also contribute to the special art space.

In 2014, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) won the architectural competition Audemars Piguet hosted to expand its historical premises. The firm designed a contemporary spiral-shaped glass pavilion to complement the company’s oldest building, where Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet set their workshop, technically a start-up of the old times, in 1875. This architectural combination symbolises the blend of tradition and forward-thinking at the heart of Audemars Piguet’s craftsmanship while honouring its deep-rooted origins in the Vallée de Joux. BIG’s high-concept spiral, seamlessly rising from the ground, offers a pristine setting for the masterpieces of technicity and design which have taken shape, year after year, in this remote valley of the Swiss Jura Mountains.

Born in 1841 in the Vendée, a coastal department of western France, Georges Clemenceau was a politician and journalist, who was a dominant figure in the French Third Republic and, as prime minister – a major contributor to the Allied victory in World War I. Nicknamed “Père la Victoire” (Father Victory) or “Le Tigre” (The Tiger), he left not only a legacy in the political history of France, but was engaged in the cultural life of fin-de-siècle Paris, having a long-lasting friendships with Rodin, Monet and Carrière.

A strategy, not a way.
The project tries to listen to the place and to imagine a potential city that, without discarding our era, is capable of preserving the way the city breathes.

Mandalas Pop-up Digital Art Museum is an inner garden, as well as a utopian city drifting in metropolises. This temporary building, though exhibited in the most bustling urban center of Beijing, provides a completely inward and isolated space.