"Matrix-Space for All": Space Installation at Taikang Art Museum
In the summer of 2024, the "Matrix" space installation created by CPLUS is exhibited in Taikang Art Museum (TAM) Gallery A. The work focuses on the neglected individual perception in the landmark urban space, encouraging people to establish emotional bonds with the city in a shared exploration of the proximate space.
"Matrix-Space for All": Space Installation at Taikang Art Museum
Back to the Beginning of Life
In the summer of 2024, the "Matrix" space installation created by CPLUS is exhibited in Taikang Art Museum (TAM) Gallery A. The work focuses on the neglected individual perception in the landmark urban space, encouraging people to establish emotional bonds with the city in a shared exploration of the proximate space.
Taikang Art Museum is located in the core area of Beijing CBD, surrounded by super-tall buildings. These towers symbolize the influence of the city and the efficient allocation of resources, weave daily activities into the prosperous scene of the CBD area. However, the massive architectural volume also causes a certain oppression.
What kind of installation can bring a unique experience to a dynamic high-rise city, while meeting the specific requirements of the gallery, was the primary question to be answered in the design. Ultimately, with "alleviating the alienation in modern cities" as the touch point, CPLUS created a place that connects with people's bodies, emotions, and memories in an intimate way.
Concept: Body Perception
The "Matrix" is an adventure in spatial experience. The installation provides a soft and safe perceptual sensation, like "returning to the mother's womb", in contrast to the hard, cold concrete forest of the CBD.
The design takes advantage of the original height of the gallery by placing a huge white inflatable ellipsoidal cabin inside the 13-meter-high space to form a "space within a space". The installation is suspended in the air by cables attached to pre-embedded components on the roof structure, thus liberating the ground space and reducing on-site activity restrictions. The “Matrix” is like a giant cocoon that transcends reality, ambiguous and polysemous, characterized by a primitive sense of the future. It produces a series of dialogues with the gallery, such as "soft and hard", "light and heavy", "hazy and clear".
The main structure is 2.2m above the ground, and only a small distance (less than 1m at the narrowest point) away from the wall, releasing a strong spatial tension. This tension represents a subtle relationship between expansion and collision, implying a variety of metropolitan pressures.
Visitors pass through a movable steel ladder to complete the transition from the high-ceilinged rectangular gallery to the wrapped ellipsoidal air cabin. Inside the "Matrix", the human body interacts with the soft surface of the membrane material in all directions. The semi-transparent membrane realizes the space occupation of geometric volume, and at the same time achieves a relatively light state. In addition, the control of light and sound on site fully stimulates the sensory experience. The pure interior space allows visitors to detach themselves from daily life, entirely relax their tense bodies, and try to perceive the existence of life.
Structure: Multi-layer Air Membrane Suspension
The methodology of structural design is to apply the rigidity of an inflatable membrane structure forming an indoor space, and then applying cables to collect the tensile stress from bottom surface to form a "cradle" suspension, and finally those cables will transform force into the structural system of the original building through a set of spatial steel trusses.
The overall air membrane structure utilizes three-layer membrane material to form two main air cabins, including an inner structural air cabin and an outer decorative air cabin. The Engineers utilized an ellipsoidal double-layer air inflatable structure to form an enterable space, ensuring that the air pressure is equalized inside and outside, eliminated the requirement of pressure transition cabins. The outer air membrane fills outwards when the pressure difference between the inside and atmosphere is about 0.3 times the atmospheric pressure, while the inner side had intend of decrease inwards. A series of pulling sheets are set between the inside and outside to prevent the inner membrane from real collapsing.
The hanging points will form concentrated loads, which will destroy the tension effect formed by the surface air pressure, causing unsightly wrinkles or bulges, and bringing in potential safety hazards. The engineers set tension load path along the tangent direction of the ellipsoid's cut section by specifying the force transmission so that the membrane only bears the tensile stress within the surface, ensuring that the tensile stresses are dispersed as evenly as possible within the range below the hanging points, eliminating the risk of stress concentration.
The total weight of the structure is 3.8t, the installation weighs 1.2t, the length, width and height are 11.7X7.2X8.0m, and it is filled with 130cb.m. of air at about 3.0kPa.
Project Details
Design Firm: CPLUS
Founding Partners: Cheng Yanchun, Li Nan
Architect in Charge: Cheng Yanchun
Design Team: Liu Xiaoguang, Bo Chen, Guo Feng, Zhu Jiaying
Structural Consultant: Lava Structural
Structural Consultant Team: Zhang Jinbin, Tang Lida, Jian Li, Liu Keke
Program: Architectural Installation
Status: Built
Dates: March-July, 2024
Location: Beijing, China
Area: 145 sq.m.
Photographs: Zhu Yumeng, Zhang Jinbin
