Sino-German cooperation to create new China National Museum

The completion of the 2.5-billion-yuan renovation project of the National Museum of China on the east flank of the Tiananmen Square in Beijing marks a successful cooperation between Chinese and Germany architects over the past seven years. The new museum is scheduled to reopen in early April.The design jointly worked out by architects from China and Germany finally stood out of the 11 candidates in 2004. The German architects involved in this design were all from GMP International Gmbh, which is a well-renowned architectural design company, while their Chinese counterparts were from the China Academy of Building Research (CABR). The two teams from different cultural background were thus engaged in a seven-year corporation for the National Museum of China.Ma Lidong, Director of the CABR Design Institute said, We opened a new office for the two teams on this project on the 14th floor in our academy, so that the nearly 50 architects from two sides could gather here and worked together for this mission, from the preliminary design to the implementation in the construction.Architects from GMP brought about international designing concept, and Chinese designers provided support based on Chinas traditional and cultural background. The joint international team turned out their first design after seven months.Stephane Rewolle, Chief Superintendent of GMP International Gmbh said, This first design is to remove the middle part of the old museum, and connect the northern part of the old museum of revolutionary history with the southern part of the history museum to create a new building. We meant to cover the two parts of the museum with one huge roof so that their eaves would join together.This design, which was the one adopted in the bidding, is characteristic of a huge floating roof that extends from the old museum. However, this idea aroused some controversy in the beginning.Said Lu Zhangshen, Curator of the National Museum of China, said, I was not satisfied with this design at first. In the meeting with German architects, we negated their plan, insisting that modifications must be made according to our request that the new building should be consistent with the old museum in style.The German architects could not understand such negation of their design. Then their Chinese counterparts provided them with a lot of reference to Chinese culture.Stephane Rewolle, Chief Superintendent of GMP International Gmbh, said: From discussions with Chinese experts, architects, and historians, we realized the importance of the museums history to the Chinese people and obviously, the building should carry the nature of this history.As they reached consensus, the architects from the two countries began to advance their design to make it perfect. In the following three years, they constantly agreed to differ through such arguments, and built mutual trust through debate, until they accomplished their mission.