BMW Museum

Beijing, China

Photo © Yang Chaoying

Exhibition Halls + Showrooms

Architects: Crossboundaries

Location: Beijing, China
Year: 2016
Client: China Zheng Tong Auto Services Holdings Ltd., 中国正通汽车服务控股有限公司
Team: Binke Lenhardt, DONG Hao, Maria Francesca Origa, Hayger Chan, LI Zhenyu
Collaborator: BMW China design team

An exclusive backdrop designed to represent the speed and luxury of the car, this BMW museum becomes a stage for a vintage collection guarded by a red gate, a reference to its Chinese curator.

SHOWCASING A CHINESE COLLECTION

The car is at the center of the concept for this museum and the focal point in the vision. In a two story space neighboring a BMW dealership the volume iscrafted into a stage for exhibit and an arrival area to welcome and host events for this private collection of BMW cars, set against a backdrop created from the image of speed.

Aside from the cars physical beauty is its allure of its machine qualities and speed.It's this feeling of speed that has been translated into a static environment, realized as a pattern of horizontal marks.
This translation of speed and the conflict of the given limitations of spaceframed theeventual terrain of the museum.

In the main exhibition space, on the upper floor, the ceiling is installed with mirrors heightening the volume above the cars.The white walls are embellished with the pattern in strips of mirror and light giving a more technical and clean appearance. Interrupted only by extruded platforms for the cars to stand, the floor runs as a continuous surface connecting to the reception floor below.

The welcome area on the lower floor is layered inbanners extruded in fabricfrom the speed pattern. Across the high volume they fall and rise to frame the functions creating a more intimate feel and align to form the symbolicgesture of a red gate defining thethreshold to the collection. Abstract but legible the banners conceal and reveal what's next, just as in a fast car winding along roads.