THE SUZHOU MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART TO COMPLETE SOON IN CHINA WITH EXHIBITION CURATED BY BIG

Rising along the edge of Jinji Lake, the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art (Suzhou MoCA) will soon open its doors to the public for the exhibition, Materialism. Commissioned by Suzhou Harmony Development Group and designed in collaboration with ARTS Group and Front Inc., the 60,000-m2 Suzhou MoCA is conceived as a village of 12 connected pavilions unified beneath a ribbon-like roof. The museum’s architecture reimagines the garden ‘lang’ 廊 – a long, covered corridor that traces a path – as a modern interpretation of the elements that have defined Suzhou’s urbanism, architecture, and landscape for centuries. The rippled and curved glass façades reflect the surrounding sky, water, and gardens, while a continuous path leads visitors on a journey through galleries, a multifunction hall, theater, restaurant, and gardens. The Materialism exhibition expands on Bjarke Ingels’ year-long guest editorship of Italian design magazine Domus, where each issue focuses on a single material. The exhibition explores how stone, earth, concrete, metal, glass, wood, fabric, plastic, plant, and recyclate shape the firm’s architecture. Large-scale mock-ups and models of 20 BIG projects, such as the studio’s own Copenhagen headquarters, the Danish Maritime Museum, Google Bay View, and The Plus, invite viewers to experience the tactile and spatial qualities that define BIG’s work. “Suzhou is the cradle of the Chinese garden. Our design for the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art is conceived as a garden of pavilions and courtyards. Individual pavilions are woven together by glazed galleries and porticoes, creating a Chinese knot of interconnected sculpture courtyards and exhibition spaces. Weaving between the legs of the Ferris wheel, the museum branches out like a rhizome, connecting the city to the lake. The result is a manmade maze of plants and artworks to get lost within. Its nodular logic only becomes distinctly discernible when seen from the gondolas above. Against the open space of the lake, the gentle conical curvature of the roofs forms a graceful silhouette on the waterfront. From above, the stainless roof tiles form a true fifth facade.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG Materialism will open to the public in the coming months, ahead of the official opening of the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art in 2026.