Red Dot Design Museum in Xiamen is the third Red Dot Design Museum globally and the second in Asia. Breaking away from traditional museums, the Red Dot Design Museum mainly exhibits industrial design products that are close to people’s daily life, which naturally becomes the source of inspiration for the designers at STEPS Architecture.
Andy Warhol once commented:” All shopping malls will become museums, and all museums will become shopping malls.” Also inspired by this comment, the designers decided that rather than designing another traditional white-box type of museum, the Red Dot Design Museum should break the boundaries between the two spatial systems of the museum and shopping mall. Luckily, this coincides with museum leadership’s idea of building a new type of design museum.
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- Photo credit: CreatAR Images (Ai Qing)
From arcades emerging in 19th Paris to shopping malls nowadays, the concept of “idler” that Benjamin created has now become a common value that architects firmly guards: Creating as many free public spaces as possible in an urban consumer environment for people to leisure. Learning from shopping malls, the team tries to create a museum that feels like wandering in shopping mall by balancing commercial and free public spaces.
The new museum is located in the commercial podium of the highest office building in Xinglin Bay, Jimei District, Xiamen. The design team tries to adapt the original spatial properties of a shopping mall into new museum spaces, thus activating this long-vacant podium.
By implanting a series of red elements as poster installation, column and railing paint, alphabetical seatings and canopy on the exterior plaza and bridge, the team creates a distinct pathway that leads people to the entrance of the museum, which also serves as the exterior public spaces of the museum, bringing a distinct shred of red to the city.
Collaborating with Network Party, STEPS Architecture fully takes advantage of the interior spatial properties of the commercial podium to form essential public spaces of the museum, which are the spaces of retail, coffee and restaurant. The atrium facing the entrance is the most distinct feature. The team chose to remove the escalators and turn it into the most iconic double-spiral red stair that serves as the visual core of the museum. The one half of the double-spiral stair facing the entrance serves as the “display stair” which seats the LED screens showing posters and videos that are updated periodically, and the other half leads people to the upper floor. The double-spiral stair intertwines dramatically, bringing much attraction both off and on-line.
The edge spaces on the second and third floors facing Xiamen Horticulture Expo Garden is sufficient with daylight and sceneries, the team only added counters and reutilised award-winning furniture, creating comfortable coffee space and restaurant, and to connect these two spaces we implant another iconic red spiral stair.
To achieve the continuous wandering experience from shopping malls, the team blurs the boundaries between exhibition halls and other spaces, creating the sense of a big integral space without partitions. Exhibition-oriented and prefabricated boundaries are two strategies to achieve the goal of museum without walls.
Showcases, openings and perforated panels in different forms give these spaces the property of exhibition, making them free exhibition halls for viewers, and also bringing extra cash to the museum by leasing these showcases to companies.
The team implies the thinking mode of industrial design, using prefabricating elements such as scaffolding to replace walls of the exhibition hall, thus breaking the sense of a closed box of exhibition space. On one hand, this meets the need for flexible exhibition spaces and cargo shipping, on the other hand, this saves tremendous time and cost due to the simultaneous work on site and in the factory. Moreover, the overall quality of space is elevated due to high controllability of prefabrication, which also coincides with the spirit of the Red Dot Design Award that recognises the value in top-notch industrial design.
Apart from planning, design and construction, the team also participates in planning the future operation of the museum, and provide exhibition design. As the leader in the field of design, the Red Dot Design Museum serves as the platform where next generation of designers grows. Education plays an essential role in museum’s operation.
Red Dot Design School provides space for sessions, forums and conferences for designers to learn, communicate and social. To accommodate such various activities, flexible theater-like seatings are designed on which the rotating table plate and seats could be disassembled and reassembled.
The section of museum space for children is relatively independent, including children’s classrooms and exhibition hall. Three distinct “wood cabins” that vary in colour are designed for the three classrooms. The mass of the cabins is cut to create openings that serve as showcases for children’s artwork. The transparent classrooms also serve as free exhibition spaces when needed.
The team designs the exhibition for children’s exhibition hall during museum opening——Wonder Filter, RGB Interactive & Design Exhibition. Based on RGB principles, Artists in Europe overlap patterns in three colours, creating psychedelic effects when colour of light changes. Multiple ways of viewing wall patterns are designed: through ever-changing LED lighting that shifts in RGB, and through wall openings that vary in colour, creating dynamic spatial experiences. A serious of mezzanine, openings, steps and sliding for children to explore, are combined with education to evoke fun.
