Design: 2011-2015
Construction: 2012-2015
Area: 6,700 m²

• Winner of the 2016 AIANYS Award of Merit: Architecture/Institutional.
• Winner of the 2016 German Design Council Iconic Award Best of Best: Museum Architecture.
• Shortlist Finalist for the 2016 World Architecture Festival: Culture/Completed Buildings.
• Winner of the 2015 Concrete Industry Board: Roger H. Corbetta Award of Merit, Out of Country.
• Financial Times – Simon Schama’s 10 Forgotten Wonders of the World
• Artinfo – Top 5 New Museums in Asia 2016

Located in the historic water town of Wuzhen, China, this museum is dedicated to the late Mu Xin, a celebrated local painter, poet, and writer. A complex figure with a prolific body of work, Mu Xin was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution and later emigrated to the United States—experiences that deeply influenced his art, which explored space as a physical construct and psychological state.

The museum is surrounded by the waters of the ancient Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, a once-critical component in Wuzhen’s cultural and economic development.The design comprises a series of cubic pavilions constructed with cast-in-place concrete. The volumes are arranged in varying sectional relationships to the canal and street, referencing the dense urban fabric of the Wuzhen from Mu Xin’s childhood. Threaded by a central pathway, each volume holds galleries and other programmatic elements that, in combination with the footpath, invite visitors to experience the grounds at their own pace.

Project Gallery