- Area: 38000 m²
- Year: 2011
-
Photographs:Zhang Siye - Zhang Ming - Wang Yuan
Text description provided by the architects. Following-up the 2010 Shanghai Expo, the Power Station of Art is a renovation and expansion project based on the Pavilion of Future which previously was the Nanshi power station built in 1985. Nowadays, the building has become a well-functioning and artistic public platform.
The project ceases the station’s magnificent industrial mission in a historically narrative way. The design process lasting for six years has witnessed the building’s transformation from a giant electric machine to a powerful engine promoting culture and art. The accomplishment of this project would greatly change the inherent structure of Shanghai’s art field and even China’s. The Power station of Art (for contemporary art), China Art Palace (for modern traditional art), and Shanghai Museum (for ancient art) will complement each other and create a more integral structure in exhibition field for Shanghai.
Through a controlled intervention, the project aims to keep the building’s existing spatial order as well as industrial characteristics. It also attempts to show the temporal span by placing the new and the old together. It shows hospitable attitude to the city and it also blurs the boundary of leisure space and exhibition space, changing the traditional relationship between the visitors and the exhibits. The strategy successfully transforms visiting behaviors to a part of daily lives. The project interprets the deep relationship between human and art through diverse and complex cultural expression. It also decomposes the traditional single-visiting-path system, and opens multiple-paths system for visitors, creating many possibilities for art exploration.
Overall, it is a touchable gallery, a garden for sharing feelings and a humanistic public platform.
