Sci-Fi Museum

Nov 2018

^ Attribute to Zaha Hadid

On Earth, the glaciers came and went, while above them the changeless Moon still carried its secret. With a yet slower rhythm than the polar ice, the tides of civilization ebbed and flowed across the galaxy. Strange and beautiful and terrible empires rose and fell, and passed on their knowledge to their successors. Earth was not forgotten, but another visit would serve little purpose. It was one of a million silent worlds, few of which would ever speak.

And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of plastic. In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.

2001 A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke

Across cities men walk, such is the thesis for architects. Ecologists study the migration of sardines. Electrical engineers arrange wires and the on and off of signals. Dreamers, who call their work “science fiction”, transcend the limits of gravity and time, create legends staged at the universe and the history: Planets and civilizations rise and die, while between them we shuttle.

The science fiction museum locates in Shijingshan Shougang Industrial Heritage Park, Beijing, previously home to the nation’s steel giant. The museum’s composition of shuttles intends to manifest the fragility of humans and their wildest dream of cosmic excursion.

BArch 3rd Year Studio / Tsinghua University

Instructed by Jun Shan