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Wutopia Lab have designed Shanghai’s first museum dedicated to the display of architectural models for the Fengyuzhu exhibition company. A physical manifestation of an architect’s design vision, the museum acts as a cultural reference and an archive presenting the work of well-known contemporary Chinese architects to the public.

“Architectural Model is a possible media of representation for unbuilt or built architecture – at some point, it’s a prophecy. When they are placed in a warehouse setting, models are turned into objects that have less meaning of the prophecy,” explain Wutopia Lab.

The architects decided to turn the museum into a ‘mega model’, conceiving a futuristic city comprised of the separate models, or in a very meta sense, the future-planning concepts of each architect. According to Wutopia Lab, this represents merging each individual ‘design prophecy’ into one.

Related: ARCHI-DEPOT: Tokyo Museum Dedicated to Architectural Models.

In the reception and elevator area, a monolithic structure displays information graphics about the museum. Beyond this point, there is a utopian ‘visionary city’ plaza, featuring vertical steel slats that form dividing screens evocative of skyscrapers. Skeleton shelves protrude from the screens, each displaying architectural models.

“Models placed on those cantilevered platforms are smaller-scaled “cities”, representing a new form, which keeps updating and growing,” says Wutopia Lab.

The museum features two main exhibition areas, ‘Tijuana’ and ‘Ironia’, as well as a communication area,  referred to as the ‘Pod Bay’. Beyond each of these main spaces, there are three special exhibition areas, each of which are clad in a primary colour; the blue ‘Asgard’, red ‘Olympus’, and yellow ‘Arrakis’, with an additional collection area ‘Tyrell’. There is also a virtual reality zone, ‘Thunderdome’, which can also be utilized as a temporary exhibition space.

The primary-coloured exhibition rooms are cocooned nooks compared to the starkly white and open spaces of the main museum. Recessed windows form platforms to prop-up the specific models on show, and also afford views to Shanghai beyond, fusing the current city and future city into a single unanimous vista.

See more projects by Wutopia Lab on Yellowtrace here.

[Images courtesy of Wutopia Lab. Photography by CreatAR Images.]

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