Ginko Gallery

Ginkgo Gallery is an innovative museum on a ginkgo tree-covered island in Jiaxing, China. Inspired by the DNA of local villages, the museum invites visitors to wander through and discover its different sections as if exploring a small town. It blends two traditional museum typologies – the guided museum and the free-plan museum – creating a floorplan with ‘fluid spaces’. Its orientation towards, and connection with, the surrounding water and landscape generate a deep relationship between culture and nature.

Over the past decade, China has undergone a ‘museum boom’, with an enormous number of iconic museums being built. Ginkgo Gallery is an antidote to this phenomenon: a humble, intricate museum where art and nature merge into one immersive experience.

The client aimed to make art part of public life, particularly by educating children in contemporary art. The museum therefore also houses an auditorium, reading room and workshop space. For the commission, MORE Architecture developed the bill of requirements in-house, based on extensive academic research into contemporary Chinese museums.

Inspired by its rural context, MORE Architecture conceived the museum as a ‘village’, based on the small scale and sophisticated network of spaces found in typical Zhejiang villages. By merging the conventional ‘guided’ route with the ‘free flow’ plan, the architects created fluid spaces where visitors can explore and choose their own route – Schinkel’s Altes Museum meets Mies’ Neue National Gallery.

The building has a modest appearance, emphasized by its materiality: its constructed entirely in in-situ cast concrete. Rough wooden planks were used as formwork, creating a distinctive rhythm and texture across facades, walls and ceilings.

The interaction with the landscape is critical to the experience. Approaching the museum across the island, visitors enter through a statue garden, while curving pathways invite them to explore. A bridge extending onto the lake allows visitors to ‘walk on water’. Inside, the museum opens towards the lake and landscape, creating a continuous transition between art and nature.