The radial museum is organized in four successive layers: the central galleries for the drawings collection, the communication
space, the galleries for digital arts, and the garden. Each layer collaborates with a specific role within the overall
character of the museum. We have designed it much larger than the brief required in order to let the public relax, get the
specific information he requires – details on the collections, the latest news on other museums, publications, etc. Large
enough to become also a convivial space where different kinds of public would mix, see each other, encounter.
The garden has also a specific museological role. Visible from every point of the communication space, avoiding any
feeling of enclosure, the garden is freely accessible via four doors interspersed at regular intervals – it is a natural extension.
It may be occupied by specific exhibits, allows for peripheral activities such as music concerts, and, especially,
gives a very particular relationship with the surrounding park and the city. This is something I strongly believe and that I
have applied in Beijing Grand National Theatre and in Shanghai Oriental Centre: a successful public space operates that
double role of being a protected place, a refuge in the city, and immediately also, in a reversed movement, of while at the
same time giving you back the city from a different point of view, one from which you recognize it as pleasant.
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