China Comic and Animation Museum

If by any chance you are a comics and animations lover, and you will travel to China next year, the place-to-go is Hangzhou, a metropolis of 6.4 million inhabitants, southwest of Shanghai, considered the Chinese capital of the animation industry.

The reason is the new China Comic and Animation Museum , planned by the Dutch practice MVRDV, which won the competition launched by the Hangzhou urban planning bureau.

The fantastical structure of 30.000 squared meters is composed by eight balloon shaped volumes which resemble the speech bubble commonly used in cartoons, thus giving immediately a message of what the museum is about.

By walking into the structure the visitors find themselves surrounded by huge circular spaces, accommodating a lobby, a comic books library, three theaters, educational spaces, a balloon entirely dedicated to offering an interactive experience in which they can experiment with all animation techniques, from drawing to motion creation to stop motion, and finally a space which hosts a permanent exhibition presented in a chronological spiral as well as more flexible temporary exhibitions.

And when they have fulfilled their curiosity of one balloon, they can walk through large openings which allow for interconnections among the volumes as well as views-in between them.