Ennead Architects completes world's largest astronomy museum in Shanghai
New York-based architectural firm Ennead Architects recently completed the world’s largest astronomy museum in Shanghai, China. The firm won the design competition for the project back in 2014. The firm is the one behind the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History.
In an interview with CNN, Thomas J. Wong, a design partner at Ennead Architects, said that there is “a lineage” between the Rose Center and the new museum.
The museum is designed to reflect the shapes and geometry within the universe. The interesting part is, despite being a 420,000-square-foot building, the spaceship-like museum does not have any straight line or right angle.
The museum, a new branch of the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, will house an observatory, a planetarium and a 78-foot-tall solar telescope. Upon entrance, visitors will encounter a broad oculus that doubles as a sundial. It demonstrates the passage of time by tracking a circle of sunlight on the ground across the entry plaza and reflecting pool.
The pathways will lead visitors to the museum’s highlight: the planetarium or the Sphere that resembles an enormous planet. Next, visitors will be brought to the top of the building, where they can find an inverted glass dome that allows them to take a look at the unfettered view of the sky.
From a bird’s eye view, the museum looks more like a swirling celestial vortex, as it was inspired by the organic geometry of the universe and the three-body problem, an unsolved mathematical mystery about how to determine the orbital paths of planets and other galactic bodies in relation to one another. The Oculus, the Sphere and the Inverted Dome represent the Sun, the Moon and stars, respectively.
The museum's lead designer and partner at Ennead Architects Thomas J. Wong explained that the museum embodies some of the fundamental laws of astrophysics. For the design, they aim to reflect the essence of the universe. He hopes that the building will supplement the exhibitions in helping visitors understand the universe and be more aware of the sky above. The team built a space that could place visitors in direct engagement with real astronomical phenomena, not just space that only houses exhibits about space.
“We wanted to highlight actual astronomical phenomena that have occurred here on Earth—things that have become more removed from our consciousness, particularly in modern urban life,” Wong said.