World-renowned Architects to Design New Home for “Oriental Sleeping Beauty” of Hunan Provincial Museum

The exhibition building of Hunan Provincial Museum built in 1999.

News Conference and Signing Ceremony of International Short-listed Competition for Conceptual Design for Reconstruction and Expansion of Hunan Provincial Museum

The “Reconstruction and Expansion Project” of Hunan Provincial Museum was officially launched on December 10, 2010, which means that the“Oriental Sleeping Beauty”, the female corpse unearthed from Mangwangdui Han Tombs, will soon have her new home. World-famous architectural firms home and abroad signed with Hunan Provincial Museum to participate in this International Short-listed Competition for Conceptual Design.

Listed as one of the eight key museums at the national level with both support from the central government and provincial governments, Hunan Provincial Museum is a first-class museum in China. The total collection of cultural relics exceeds 180,000 pieces, with cultural relics excavated from Mawangdui Han Tombs especially the ever-lasting remain of Lady Xinzhui enjoying the world-renowned fame. Despite the fact that it had been buried for over 2100 years, the body was found relatively intact and retaining a certain degree of moisture; the soft tissue under the skin was still tender and elastic and the joints were movable to a certain extent, thus attracting worldwide attentions. 

However, due to the fact that Hunan Provincial Museum lags far behind its Chinese peers in terms of facilities and space, only very limited amount of collections can be displayed to just 5,000 audiences each day.

By the time when this “Reconstruction and Expansion Project” is completed, the total building area of Hunan Provincial Museum will reach 78,000 m2, with substantial improvement in the facilities and conditions for cultural relics preservation, exhibition, audience education service. The total number of visitors received by Hunan Provincial Museum will experience a considerable increase, from the exiting 1.4 million to 2.5~3 million every year, said Chen Jianming, director of Hunan Provincial Museum.

Meinhard von Gerkan, the founder of Germany GMP Architects (No.5 in global architectural firms), expressed his wishes to try their best and present a perfect design to pass down the brilliant cultural relics from generation to generation.

During the near-by survey and visiting of Hunan Provincial Museum, we are deeply attracted by such beautiful environment; therefore, the integration of natural landscape into the new-built museum will be the highlight in our design, said Antonello Stella, the founder of Italian n!studio. 

To further understand the Hunan culture, architects also visited such historic and cultural sites as Yuelu Academy, Orange Island, Taiping Street, etc. It is reported that the short-listed designs will be selected and displayed in next March.