Jinan Museum

The design of the new Jinan Regional Museum takes its cues from the rich vocabulary of Jinan’s traditional architecture, with its grey brick wall construction, sloped clay tile roofs and intricate stone paved streets. From these basic elements a modern building has been reinterpreted and synthesized into a new language, one that is a contemporary model for the new Jinan city but with the elegance and simplicity to make it timeless.

LOCATION: Jinan, China

CLIENT: Jinan New City Administration

SIZE: 100,000 SQ.M / 1,076,391 SQ.FT

STATUS: In Planning

CATEGORY: Cultural

The new museum’s forms, such as the gently curved roof line and the sloped stone gallery walls will be familiar to many but refreshing in their modern invention. The forms are meant to be subtle reminders of Jinan’s great history but their construction and sleek lines root the building firmly in Jinan’s unbound future.

Jinan’s abundant natural resources also contribute greatly to the design of the museum. The famous profiles of the Jiuru and Taishan mountains that stand prominently in the horizon are recalled in the undulating roofs of the main Galleries and Research Building while the strong horizontal expanse of the Yellow River embankments are reflected in the long, insistent roof ridge running along the main street elevation. The sloped walls of the galleries, clad in horizontal coursings of stone recall the local quarries that figure prominently in Shandong’s economic development while the stone cladding recreates the familiar brick texture of Jinan’s Old City, resized at a monumental scale.

While the building reads as a singular mass, it is in fact two separate museums, each with its’ own identity but unified in form. To the east, the main Jinan Museum is organized around a large open courtyard that resembles and functions like the town squares in Old City Jinan. Separately, and to the west the smaller Cultural and Heritage Hall is grouped vertically and is anchored by an iconic observation tower that recalls many ancient pavilion structures around Jinan. All the galleries from both museums share the same architectural vocabulary and are arranged in groups along two lines forming internal streets that connect the project much like the city itself.