Located in the center of the 72-hectare complex in the Forbidden City, which dates back to the fifteenth century, the Palace Museum houses one of the world’s largest collections of ancient Chinese artifacts, calligraphy, paintings, and porcelain. Working closely with the museum’s curators, we designed an exhibition that builds on our experience designing for contemporary art and artists, bringing together artworks spanning from antiquity to contemporary art within the historic structure. Titled “Mirroring the Heart of Heaven and Earth: Ideals and Images in the Chinese Study,” the exhibition showcased work from prominent contemporary artists including Liu Dan, Xu Bing, Xu Lei, Bai Ming, and Young Ho Chang.

The exhibition encourages a dialogue between historical artifacts objects and contemporary artworks. One example is a plaque inscribed with the words “Chamber of the Five Classics,” written by the Qianlong Emperor. Normally displayed in the eastern annex of the Palace of Heavenly Purity, once the imperial study, it is now prominently displayed at the exhibition’s entrance. The inscription references the Five Classics, some of the oldest surviving Chinese texts that form the foundational works of Confucianism.

Nestled in the hillside of Bukhan mountain, the National Museum of Korean Literature (NMKL) overlooks the Eunpeyong New Town, an emerging cultural sector in the northwest of Seoul.

The NMKL is envisioned not only as a state-of-the-art institution dedicated to the preservation of literature, but also as a dynamic village for the exchange of culture and knowledge. Inspired by the cultural heritage of Korean literature, its design is open and democratic with collections and various programming easily accessible in two cultural store house towers. Clad in paper-like, ceramically fritted-glass sails, the arrangement evokes the soft curvature of a traditional Korean village.

Taking advantage of the sloping site, multiple public entrances and circulation points around the entire complex facilitate cultural programming throughout the day and into the evening. The larger tower with the museum gallery and specialized library consists of a series of tiered platforms and trays overlooking an expansive public atrium.

The Grand Canal, the longest canal in the world starting from the old capital of Beijing to the Summer Capital of Hangzhou, runs 1,776km and links the Yellow and Yangtze River inspiring many who navigated and witnessed the enormous engineering feat throughout history. 

Once above ground, views of the passing ships on the canal can be seen from the floating galleries above the large reflecting pool on the plaza.  A single pedestrian bridge spans over the pool and the heavily trafficked Binhe road adjacent our site, giving panoramic views of the canal and the famous Changhong bridge while spiraling down to connect to a series of tree lined pedestrian paths and bridges connecting the famous bridge to the new museum. 

OLI conceptualized the exhibition design as a seemingly endless open space that holds a constellation of works by 60 living artists from over 20 countries. Interactive environments and installations commissioned by the Centre Pompidou appear alongside various research-based artworks. The result is an endless combination of unique visitor pathways that encourage dialogue and the exchange of ideas, inviting visitors to reconsider the meaning of cosmopolitan values in a rapidly changing world.

Located in a city known for its gardens, the Suzhou Censer Museum celebrates the grandfather of the client, a renowned maker and merchant of incense burners, objects historically and highly coveted by collectors, and the subsequent generations of successful master craftsmen and merchants in the family.

Adapted from those existing structures, the gallery spaces were stripped of all prior additions and preserved in their original, unadulterated state. This decision recovers and preserves the factory’s original human qualities as it transforms into an exhibition space for contemporary art. Original doors, windows, and skylights create cross views to the interior street and bring in a distinctive quality of light.

The spatial character of each hall emerges both from this relationship with the outside and from the craftsmanship of its construction and, in contrast to a white-box gallery, give way to a series of distinct potential art installation strategies.

The Chapel of the Miho Institute of Aesthetics is architect I.M. Pei’s last significant built work. Set in the mountains of Shigaraki, Japan, it serves as the spiritual and programmatic heart of a private school.

The 240-seat chapel’s striking sculptural form emerges from folding a two-dimensional fan-shaped surface into a conical volume. The lofted surface between the top and bottom curves is clad in 51 custom-warped stainless steel panels on the exterior and over 8,454 individually curved Japanese red cedar wood planks on the interior, lining a structural concrete shell. A crowning skylight and dramatic glazed facade flood the space with light, warmly illuminating the articulated wood panels.

The museum is a simple geometric volume composed of angled planes, with thin vertical ceramic frits of varying densities that provide both pattern and shading. A floating glass enclosure of horizontally fritted glass defines the second-floor volume, where both the exhibition space and service core are housed.

Upon entering the building, the visitor experiences the in-between spaces created by the primary and secondary envelopes of fritted glass, engaging panoramic views of different densities, reminiscent of the stories and compositions woven from the colorful threads of silk embroidery.

The open plan within the exhibition space allows for functional flexibility while retaining a strong circuit of continuously unfolding experiences. The program is defined by light, ephemeral partitions, deriving their colorful translucency from those of embroidered screens. The materiality and form of the translucent surfaces creates a “living 2D embroidery” from the observer’s perspective.

Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan Province or “Heavenly State” (Tian Fu Zhi Guo), is located west of the Sichuan Basin and in the center of the Chengdu Plain. The site is located at the intersection of Tian Fu Square and Tian Fu Avenue in Shuangliu, Chengdu, around 20km from the city center.

The Chengdu Silk Art Culture (CSAC) Park establishes a new typology that reaches back to the tradition and origins of Chengdu as a settlement and a city. Within the irregular linear boundaries of the site, the park flows from East to West along the subtle changes of the existing topography, binding seamlessly the varying scales of buildings in varying sectional relationships. The office and commercial plaza on the South Hongxing Avenue to the East gradually transforms into a quiet residential development to the West. A green area North of the residential sector creates a landscape that flows into the surrounding fertile hills of an urban esplanade and to a park plaza on the Southeastern end of the site. In the opposing direction, commercial retail space circulates inhabitants and visitors from the taller, larger complexes in the Northwest to the small-scale retail and office typologies in the Southeast.

Haidao Silk Art Cultural Museum takes center stage as a cultural beacon in the Haidao Silk Cultural Art Park, situated in the new Central Business District of Hainan, China. The facade is composed of draped “silk,” aligning the main traffic artery and the Centeral Park of master plan. Expressed through the varying textures of colored concrete, polished stone and glass, the facade accentuates the “drape” and curvature along the viewer’s changing vantage and the movement of the sun.

The interwoven interior spaces establish a typology of a vertical “living museum,” where various cultural events and silk exhibitions take place alongside other endeavors of entertainment, education, shopping and leisure. The amalgamation of activities within the parameters of museography establish an architecture integral to China’s modern, international lifestyle.

The Museum of Islamic Art is located just south of Doha’s Corniche on a man-made island 60 meters from the shore. Protected by a C-shaped peninsula, the limestone and granite building is physically isolated yet highly visible throughout the capital city, appearing as an architectural landmark emerging from the Persian Gulf.

The project ignited a studio-wide exploration into the essence of Islamic architecture across its wide-ranging cultural and regional expressions. That search ultimately centered on the desert sun, and the way it animates and enlivens simple geometric forms. In response, the museum’s exterior is shaped by the interplay of sunlight and shadow, with radiant surfaces and monolithic faceted forms creating depth within the building’s monumental form.