One Lunch-Hour | Move the Garden into the Gallery

In the midst of Beijing’s CBD, surrounded by skyscrapers, have you ever visited an art museum quite like this? Its intentionally thickened walls resemble massive stones adorned with ancient cave paintings; its recessed base makes it appear to “float” above the ground; and its detached ceiling creates the impression of an ‘art island’ suspended in the heart of the city.

For this session of One Lunch Hour, we have invited Cheng Yanchun, one of the founding architects of CPLUS. He will guide us in unraveling the spatial aesthetics behind the inaugural exhibitions of Taikang Art Museum, sharing the underlying design philosophy, working methods, and plenty of substantive architectural knowledge.

When you visit Taikang Art Museum in person, you can experience the delight of “wandering through a garden.” The various openings of different shapes in the walls may remind you of the ‘latticed windows and moon gates’ found in classical Chinese gardens. Walking along the second-floor passage, your gaze is drawn back into the exhibition hall through a long, narrow window embedded in a curved wall. The interplay of solid and void, with layered spaces, creates a continuously unfolding visual depth. Join us at Taikang Art Museum to listen as Cheng Yanchun reveals the ingenious spatial design of the museum’s inaugural shows from an architectural perspective!