The New Perkins+Will–designed Shanghai Natural History Museum Is Open

The Shanghai Natural History Museum has recently opened its new site, a 479,180-square-foot building designed by Ralph Johnson of Perkins+Will, in downtown Shanghai’s Jing’an Sculpture Park. The massive new structure has given the museum 20 times its previous exhibition space.

Many prominent design features of the building were derived from nature and work toward reducing the museum’s use of natural resources. Curving up from deep below street level, the structure takes the shape of a nautilus, with a sunken pond at its center. Temperature is regulated by the evaporative cooling of this pond, which collects water from the museum’s vegetated roof, and by geothermal wells. The walls are made of glass panes arranged as if they were plant cells, illuminating the gallery spaces so that artificial lighting is hardly needed during the day.

Visitors to the Shanghai Natural History Museum can marvel at 10,000 specimens from every corner of the Earth and at an exhibition of the museum’s own story, one of green design in urban China.

The Shanghai Natural History Museum is located in the Jing’an Sculpture Park, Nanjing Road, Jing’an District, Shanghai.