Suzhou is a Chinese canal city which aged for 2,500 years. Set on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River on the verge of Lake Taihu, the city represented the edge of urban sophistication: a place where enclosed garden evolved into a naturalistic universe in miniature. In 1997 and 2000, UNESCO identified nine of the remaining 69 walled gardens as World Heritage Sites where the museum will be built. Originally, the museum was founded in 1960 and located in the national historic landmark, Zhong Wang Fu palace complex. This old Suzhou Museum has been a highly-regarded regional museum with a number of significant Chinese cultural relics.

In 2001, I.M. Pei was commissioned by the mayor of modern Suzhou to design a museum at a critical juncture: deep in the historic district at the intersection of two canals in the northeastern corner of the city, adjacent to a historic palace, and backed against an ultra-sensitive international treasure, the Garden of the Humble Administrator (1506-21). The new designed museum is covering over 15,000 square meters and located at the cross of Dongbei Street and Qimen Road. It will house over 30,000 cultural relics; most notably for excavated artifacts, Ming and Qing Dynasty paintings and calligraphy, and ancient arts and crafts. The museum will be equipped with 7,000 square meters of exhibition galleries, a 200-seat auditorium, a museum shop, administrative and curatorial offices, a research library, study center, and extensive art storage facilities and several Chinese gardens.

Taking local context as main consideration, the project has several limitations. The design requirement limits the building height to not exceed 16 meters and no more than 6 meters adjacent to the existing historic buildings. Scholars at Beijing’s Tsinghua University suggested that the architect respect the prevalent Suzhou coloration, white and gray, colors that serve as a backdrop for the community’s leafy green gardens and streets. The solution for the height limitations is by depressing the building’s mass into the earth, although some site problems such as the high water table in Suzhou, a water encircled city, compounded the difficulty of excavating very deep. Requirements demanding open space and greenery added complexity to a solution that ultimately split the difference: two stories above grade and one below, with a large quadrant on the ground plane left as garden space.

Symmetry is one of the very key element of the Chinese architecture, and it appears in I.M. Pei’s design. The Suzhou Museum is divided into three sections. The center includes the entrance, the hall and the main garden, the West Wing is exhibition area and the East Wing belongs to administration offices and education area. The layout of three axes is referring the style of Prince Zhong’s Mansion. The white-washed plaster wall with dark gray clay tile is the construction characteristic of Suzhou. The new museum adopts it as the primary colors. Instead of using traditional clay tiles, the roof is made of gray granites with uniformed colors. Modern steel structure is applied to the new museum to replace traditional roof beam structure. Pei involved himself in every aspect of the work. According to the Pei Partnership’s on-site architect, Bing Lin, ultimately Pei and his two sons, Chien Chung Pei and Li Chung Pei, selected every rock and every tree.

The interior is decorated with wooden frames and white ceiling. In addition, metal sunscreens with wooden panels instead of traditional carved windows lattice are introduced to make the new museum more sophisticated.  Under the design concept of “Chinese style with innovation, Suzhou style with creativity” and the idea of “not too high, not too large and not too abrupt”, through bold and meaningful site selection and high-quality construction, the new museum becomes a modern comprehensive museum with humanism connotation.

It does not only has the character of Suzhou style garden, but also contains the simple geometric form of modern art as well as the exquisite structural layout with full function. The construction of the new museum makes good use of space resource to advocate the culture, and to disclose the elegance of architecture and technical development. Responding to Suzhou’s heritage, the architect placed a walled garden with a void at the museum’s core. Rather than compete with the landscape iconography familiar to tourists (miniaturized trees, sculptural rock formations, scenic twists and turns), Pei used sculptural stone to form a scene according to painting in Song Dynasty.

Water provides a literal link to the Garden of the Humble Administrator, flowing through the common wall at the rear of the older garden into a new pond at the new museum, an open space punctuated by a stylized garden pavilion. The lotus pool formed by this stream acts an orienting device throughout the museum, visible from multiple points within the courtyard plan, reflecting the sky into another dimension.

There is one interesting point of water usage, particularly in the two wings area of the museum. The intention of the designer is to ask people turn left and see the west wing first and then leave the museum from the east wing. Rather than put a large “Turn left please” sign at the entrance, Pei made the west wing a little big longer and had a water fall at the end of the hall way, so the sounds of water can be very attractive to visitors. It is the same principle in usability: if you need a label to explain something, the design may already failed.

Plants provide an intimate connection. In laying out a small courtyard as a wisteria court, the planners sought out a vine estimated to be 500 years old from the adjacent Prince Zhong’s Palace compound, then grafted 10 small branches from the older plant onto larger, newer wisteria stock. Blossoms, shade, and fragrance bring sensory stimulation to the present and recall the mythical past.

Surrounding the lotus pool, the building plan outlines a framework of galleries on the one hand and administrative spaces on the other. The octagonal great hall at the entry, lit by a custom chandelier, frames the garden while encouraging the visitor to turn and proceed. Protected exhibition spaces lie off passageways, sized to showcase the small, precious objects that characterized Suzhou craftsmanship for an aristocracy, including ceramics, paintings, jade, and woodcarvings. A painting gallery resides on the second level, up a grand staircase backed by a granite wall and smoothed by running water. On the garden’s eastern side, Pei organized a contemporary gallery to showcase new Chinese art.

Perhaps Suzhou Museum will be the last design of Mr. I. M. Pei in his career. It is not only a public construction symbol in Suzhou, but also an innovative mark bridging Chinese architectural culture from the tradition to the future. Prompting the protection of Suzhou cultural heritage, the new museum also has turned a new page for Suzhou Museum. The project opened with a celebratory event on the Night of the Mid-Autumn Festival on October 6, 2006.

[Show as slideshow]