Just outside Shanghai and set beside Jinji Lake, the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has officially launched to the public. The 60,000 sq m landmark soft-opened its doors on 30 August 2026 with a series of preview exhibitions – among them a show on the architecture firm's own work.
Step inside BIG’s Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art
BIG created the museum to unfold like a village, and it features a contemporary interpretation of traditional Suzhou gardens. Under a ribbon-like roof, the project comprises 12 pavilions with a central covered corridor that acts as a stem, branching into the varying exhibition spaces. Bridges and tunnels are positioned above and below ground, connecting visitors to the changing exhibitions.
‘If the historic city centre is the cradle of the Chinese garden, the [Jinji] lake district is the cradle of a new Suzhou. The site of the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art is sandwiched between the city and the lake. A newly constructed Ferris wheel partially blocks the relationship with the water,' says Bjarke Ingels, founder and creative director of BIG.
'By dissolving the museum into a Chinese garden of interconnected galleries, distributed across the site like pavilions in a park, the museum becomes a connection between the city and the lake, rather than an obstacle. Its urban porosity allows citizens to walk through sculpture gardens to the lakefront, while the water penetrates between the pavilions to reach the city,' he continues.
The Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art marks the first completed art museum for the architecture firm. The museum also presents BIG’s own 'Materialism' exhibition, which invites visitors on a journey that explores ten different materials that helped shape the firm's work. The show includes large-scale mock-ups and models of projects from around the world.
The museum is a significant new venue for contemporary art, design, and public life in Suzhou, with a focus on cross-cultural relationships between Eastern and Western artistic traditions, headlined by a Picasso exhibition and a large survey of contemporary Chinese art.
Ingels continues: ‘Not only do I see our design as an homage to its local heritage, a sort of Scandinavian reinterpretation of a unique typology, the Chinese garden, but the result is in many ways a manifestation of the ancient future of Suzhou and a testament to the construction quality and technical sophistication that is becoming the rule rather than the exception in contemporary Chinese architecture.’
