a pillarless museum at the edge of the haiku
The Hainan Science Museum by CRAZY open in haiku, Chinawhere its silvery, spiraling bulk rises alongside the Wuyuan River National Wetland Park. With architecture led by Ma Yansong, the museum has already welcomed more than 350,000 visitors during its soft launch, with peak days attracting more than 5,800 people.
From above, the building reads as a compressed coil positioned between freeway, city and wetland. It is rounded like a shell facade it appears to hover above the ground, with wide bands of metal catching the pale sky and softening the scale of the institution. The form gives the Hainan Science Museum a sense of movement before visitors enter, as if the building is formed by rotation instead of stacked floor slabs.
‘I wanted the work to be built on the idea of flow and chaos — space, function and knowledge flowing into each other, freely,‘ notes Ma Yansong. ‘Different topics should be connected, overlap and remain open.‘
images © Arch-Exist unless otherwise noted
a spiral connects the galleries
Inside, the group at MAD organizes the Hainan Science Museum around a single spiral path connecting each gallery. Visitors can enter from the top and descend through ring-shaped exhibition spaces, moving from deep space and ocean themes to Hainan rainforests, tropical agriculture and hands-on areas for children. Those who start on the ground floor follow the same path upwards, with tactile learning extending out into the universe.
This constant circulation gives the museum its architectural logic. Science is presented through proximity and movement, with subjects placed along a common path rather than isolated rooms. The path turns learning into a natural sequence. Visitors see the gaps, feel the next level up or down, and maintain contact with the larger volume as they move through the exhibits.
the Hainan Science Museum rises next to the Wuyuan River National Wetland in Haikou
a pillarless interior carried by three cores
The spiral is supported by three concrete core tubes, allowing the exhibition floors to remain column-free. This structural decision gives the galleries an open, uninterrupted character, while allowing the ring-shaped museum to rise above the square and surrounding waters. The engineering of the building directly serves the spatial concept: traffic, structure and public ground work as a single system.
In the main hall, the effect is expansive and bright. White balconies curve around a central void, while daylight pours through the roof and washes over the upper levels. The suspended elements of the exhibition, including an astronaut and the lunar figure, draw attention upwards, emphasizing the vertical movement built into the design. The interior avoids the heavy feel often associated with large museums, using the spiral to keep the space moving.
a continuous spiral connects each gallery within the museum
a shell-like metal facade
The exterior is wrapped in 843 fiber-reinforced polymer panels, forming a metallic skin that shifts with weather and daylight. In some views, the surface appears soft and blurry. In others, it reflects the tropical brightness of Haikou with a more intense glow. Narrow horizontal openings are cut into the shell, revealing zones of internal activity and giving the building scale to the skyline.
These openings also moderate the mass of the museum. Up close, the Hainan Science Museum becomes a multi-layered object, with rounded edges, recessed glazing and deep shadows between its zones. The silver envelope gives the work a futuristic presence, but the details keep the focus on surface, thickness and shadow. It feels built around movement, with every curve reinforcing the spiral inside.
the silver shell is formed from 843 fiber-reinforced polymer panels
science as urban infrastructure
The Hainan Science Museum is located in an area with more than thirty schools and kindergartens within a two-mile radius, a context that shaped MAD’s approach to the project. In this setting, the museum functions as a public learning building for families and students nearby, with a planetarium, huge screen cinema, sunken plaza and shaded outdoor planting areas that extend the program beyond conventional exhibition spaces.
MAD’s design places this educational ambition within a building that visitors understand through their bodies. They walk the spiral, cross the shadowy ground, look up through the central void, and read the exterior as a continuous shell. For the Hainan Science Museum, architecture becomes part of the course: knowledge moves through space, and the museum gives this movement a visible form.
Three concrete cores maintain the exhibition floors without columns
