a perforated, fluted facade peels away from TAOA-designed hangzhou empathy museum

"The Hangzhou Empathy Museum by TAOA Studio stands along a riverfront corridor in Hangzhou, where a former construction site has been reworked into a compact community arts institution. The project begins with an unfinished condition, an underground parking garage already complete and a planned structure above, and turns that fragment into a civic space with a distinct architectural presence. TAOA approaches the museum from the inside outward, with its original massing described as a cube truncated by a cylinder."

"Facing a river on one side and a major road on the other, the envelope of TAOA's Hangzhou Empathy Museum reads as a peeled shell. The city-facing elevation opens and curves away, creating a surface that stands slightly apart from the inner volume while allowing air and light to pass between. The building gains depth through this layered construction, with exterior skin and interior rooms held in measured tension."

"The architects wrap the entire exterior in a facade of curved stainless steel panels. Their inherent stiffness allows wide spans without secondary purlins, giving the surface a continuous rhythm. Under changing daylight the metal carries a soft sheen. Reflections shift with passing clouds and traffic, lending the volume a sculptural tenderness that tempers its compact form. TAOA transforms an unfinished parking structure into the Hangzhou Empathy Museum"

TAOA Studio converted an unfinished underground parking garage and planned superstructure into the Hangzhou Empathy Museum on a riverfront corridor in Hangzhou. Exhibition halls carved from the basement drive the spatial organization of upper floors, with programs pressing outward to reshape the structure and facade. The building reads as a peeled shell along river and road, with a layered stainless-steel exterior skin that creates depth and measured tension with interior volumes. Perforations and curved metal panels diffuse light and blur views, creating steady, diffuse illumination for galleries and reflective surfaces that soften the compact form.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine