Maritime Museum, Lingang New City, near Shanghai, China

Consultancy 2005

Design Meinhard von Gerkan

Partner Nikolaus Goetze

Project managers Klaus Lenz, Marcus Tanzen

Design team Richard Sprenger, Elena Melnikova,
Ben Grope, Markus Carlsen

Project team Richard Sprenger, Eazy Lin, Jens Reichert, Birgit Föllmer, Udo Meyer

Structural engineering Werner Sobek

Chinese partner practice SIADR

Client Shanghai Harbour City Investment Co.

Gross floor area 46,400 m²

Construction period 2006-2009

Photos Jan Siefke

Maritime Museum, Youth Centre and Library in Luchao

The solitaire-type structures of the Maritime Museum, the Youth Centre and the Library are combined to form a homogenous overall complex with the help of the uniform use of shapes and materials.

Arcades, footbridges and open beams form subtle design elements that, in an overall play of light and shade and integrating the water and green areas, lend the complex of the three different functions a mutuality in their design.

Centrally placed between the Library and the Youth Centre, the Maritime Museum, with its expressive roof shape, stands out distinctly and independently against this formal overall construction. Two light roof shells, facing each other and overlapping, that in the broadest sense evoke in the observer the idea of a maritime shape and an analogy to a sail, create the identity-forming landmark of the Museum that is so decisive for the overall character of the complex. The large, hall-like space below this roof construction is intended for the exhibition of large, ancient ships that have been assessed as being valuable to cultural history. Here they will be made accessible to the general public.

The entwined "sails" stand freely on a pedestal in which all the functions of the Museum are accommodated. Spacious open staircases are inviting places to linger and bear an immediate relation to the landscaped open spaces.

The formal design elements of the publicly accessible pedestal that can be reached via a generously arranged outside staircase can also be found in the two directly neighbouring buildings, the Library and the Youth Centre. These two formal, structurally related building components stand on an imaginary axis directly opposite to one another and therefore flank the Maritime Museum with its light marine roof construction that is visible from a great distance.

Sail construction for the Maritime Museum in Luchao
For the proposed maritime-type roof the constructional principle of shells will be adopted. The sail-shaped, triangular shells will be formed from a section of the surface of a sphere. They will be supported on their lower corners and on the diagonal sides of the sails where the edges meet each other at the same level.

Thanks to the chosen spherical geometry the shell can be produced innovatively and at the same time economically. It is proposed to make the surface out of fibre-glass reinforced plastic (GRP), prefabricated sandwich elements as used in shipbuilding and aircraft construction. In doing so web structures will be inserted between the two GRP coating layers in order to create the effective static depth. A particular attraction could be the partial translucency that lights up the structure from inside, particularly at night. In order to reveal the inner transfer of forces in the shell, it is possible to divide up the individual segments using the stress trajectories. The later joints would then be translucent and the forces transfer would be visible at night like leaf veins on the shell.