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MOCAPE-Museum of Contemporary Art & Planning Exhibition Shenzhen International Competition – Finalist 2007
Site: Shenzhen
Client: City of Shenzhen, China
Area: 80 000 m2
Cost: 65 000 000 Euros H.T
Design Team : SERERO Architects (David Serero, Anthony Cheung, Nordine Chevalier, Alice Sabatier, Fabrice Zaini)
"Gongshi (or Scholar's Rocks) is the term for stones that were collected by Chinese scholars because they resembled mountains (both famous and imaginary) and similar natural wonders of the world around. They represented a focus for meditation of religious or philosophic principles and served for contemplation prior to writing poems or painting. Chinese learned to admire the rocks for "surfaces that suggest great age, forceful profiles that evoke the grandeur of nature, overlapping layers or planes that impart depth, and hollows or perforations that create rhythmic, harmonious patterns." For over 1,000 years, Chinese literati and Taoist monks often brought these mountains into their studios for meditation and contemplation while they wrote or painted. Our proposal for the MOCAPE aims in similar terms to question the way the people consider an art museum, and its relationship with its urban environment. It is a point of singularity in the master plan of the Shenzhen Civic Centre. The MOCAPE is not a building, it is rather conceived as a rock , which geometry has been sculpted by program and by its surrounding condition. It is wrapped by a continuous surface which integrates strong structural characteristics with ornamental pattern inspired by the traditional Chinese puzzle called the Tangram."
