As I was making my way to the Humble Administrator's Garden, I saw a cool modern building. It was the Suzhou Museum.
And I soon realized it was an IM Pei building, as he continues his motif of triangles all over the compound.
So I had to go in a check it out.
While Pei was born in Guangzhou, his family is from Suzhou. It was opened in 2006.
The design of the museum is simple, refreshing, reflective and elegant.
He tried to bring in as much natural light as possible and then shielding the precious objects with wooden slats on the ceiling.
There aren't many objects in the museum, but what they have is impressive. There is a small collection of beautiful bronze artifacts and jade dug up from a tomb in Zhongshan in the late 1970s.
While there are security staff milling around, they aren't active in stopping people from taking pictures. They're probably more concerned about people stealing than damaging the objects with flash photography.
Everything is in English and Chinese, even a movie about the museum and how the tomb was found.
And outside there's a small garden made of rocks that look like mountains, a pond with carp and bamboo trees.
The museum is another gem in the town, if not for what it holds, but for its design.
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1 comment:
im pei is pre-occupied with triangles and pyramids. . good examples are the glass pyramids at the louvre in paris and china bank in hong kong. i need to see a few pictures to appreciate his museum at suzhou. i only have flipped through an aritcle on it some time ago. i was impressed by its simplicity of forms and lines. and i like its color scheme with with white walls grey bricks and black roof tiles.
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