经济学人泛读：中国当代艺术——沙丘博物馆

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Contemporary art in China

The sands of time 

A museum on the Chinese coast aims to merge with its environment 

Buried beneath a sand dune, in the beach town of Beidaihe, nestles one of China’s newest art galleries. An offshoot of the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing, 300km away, the UCCA Dune is unlike any other cutting-edge art museum in China. Most are high-profile architectural statements, erected in the middle of bustling cities. The Dune is subtle and secluded, its galleries unfolding against the backdrop of the sands.

Interdependence with the landscape and the local community is at the heart of the Dune’s purpose. It aims to be sustainable ecologically as well as financially, and to help protect the environment rather than destroying it. “Our work was not just to design a physical structure,” says Li Hu of OPEN Architecture, one of the overseers of the project, but to “dream up an entirely new type of institution.” 

Mr Li wanted to create a gallery that was not “juxtaposed” to its environment but “merged into it”. Instead of placing the museum on top of the dunes as was originally planned, he decided to bury the building beneath them to preserve the coastal ecology. The structure is heated by geothermal energy; its walls and windows and the wooden tables in its café were handmade from local materials, a tribute to the craftsmanship of the Hebei region. Because the museum is lit naturally by skylights, visitors’ experiences of the artwork will vary with the seasons and time of day.