BIG Designed Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art Nears Completion

The Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art (Suzhou MoCA), designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), is nearing completion and will soon open its doors with ‘Materialism’, an exhibition curated by BIG itself. Set to open in 2026 officially, the 60,000-square-meter museum reinterprets Suzhou’s timeless garden heritage through a composition of 12 interconnected pavilions arranged beneath a sweeping, ribbon-like roof.

Commissioned by the Suzhou Harmony Development Group and designed in collaboration with ARTS Group and Front Inc., the museum occupies a prime waterfront location along Jinji Lake, envisioned as a new destination for contemporary art, design, and public engagement in China.

A Modern Garden of Pavilions

Drawing from Suzhou’s classical landscape design traditions, BIG reimagines the city’s distinctive language, the covered corridor that winds through traditional gardens, into a fluid, architectural experience. Ten of the twelve planned pavilions have already been built, connected by glazed galleries and porticoes that weave together a series of courtyards, pathways, and exhibition spaces. The final two pavilions, extending over Jinji Lake, will be completed next year.
“Suzhou is the cradle of the Chinese garden. Our design for the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art is conceived as a garden of pavilions and courtyards. Individual pavilions are woven together by glazed galleries and porticoes, creating a Chinese knot of interconnected sculpture courtyards and exhibition spaces. Weaving between the legs of the Ferris wheel, the museum branches out like a rhizome, connecting the city to the lake. The result is a manmade maze of plants and artworks to get lost within. Its nodular logic only becomes distinctly discernible when seen from the gondolas above. Against the open space of the lake, the gentle conical curvature of the roofs forms a graceful silhouette on the waterfront. From above, the stainless roof tiles form a true fifth facade,” says Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director of BIG.

Clad in curved glass and warm-toned stainless steel, the museum’s façades reflect the changing light, sky, and water, blurring the boundary between architecture and the landscape. Inside, natural light filters through skylights and clerestories, animating the galleries with soft shadows and reflections.

The Spatial Design

Visitors will arrive through an expansive public plaza before entering the museum or wandering along its walkways that reach out toward Jinji Lake.

Within the museum, four pavilions house the primary gallery experience, while others accommodate an entrance hall, theater, restaurant, multifunctional spaces, and a grand atrium.

The layout encourages exploration: bridges and underground passages connect pavilions, enabling adaptable circulation patterns that respond to seasonal changes and curatorial needs. Gardens and courtyards punctuate the interior sequence, framing views and offering quiet pauses between exhibitions.
Outside, the landscape design by Shanghai Shuishi Landscape Design Co. continues the museum’s dialogue with Suzhou’s ecology. As visitors move toward the water, the terrain transitions from paved plaza to greenery to aquatic planting, a physical and symbolic journey from land to lake.

Designed for Sustainability

Reflecting BIG’s commitment to environmental performance, Suzhou MoCA aims to achieve China’s GBEL 2-Star Green Building certification. The design integrates passive shading, natural ventilation, and locally sourced materials, minimizing energy consumption while enhancing comfort.

The building’s composition of smaller, interconnected volumes helps moderate the internal climate naturally, echoing the passive cooling of traditional Suzhou architecture.
‘Materialism’: BIG’s Curated Exhibition

Coinciding with the museum’s completion, BIG introduces Materialism, an exhibition that examines how materials shape architectural expression. Expanding on Bjarke Ingels’ guest editorship for Domus magazine, where each issue focused on a specific material, the exhibition takes visitors through a sensory journey “from stone to recyclate.”
Large-scale mock-ups and models of 20 BIG projects, including Google Bay View, The Plus, Danish Maritime Museum, and BIG’s Copenhagen headquarters, invite visitors to explore the tactile and spatial qualities of different materials. Each gallery section is dedicated to one medium – stone, earth, concrete, metal, glass, wood, fabric, plastic, plant, and recyclate, showcasing how matter itself informs design thinking.

Even the seating throughout the galleries is constructed from these very materials, while plaques are crafted from corresponding substances such as rammed earth, yellow rust stone, and terrazzo, allowing visitors to engage directly with texture and material variation.

A Continuum of Cultural Projects
Suzhou MoCA adds to BIG’s growing portfolio of cultural landmarks, which includes The Twist at Kistefos Sculpture Park in Norway, the Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet in Switzerland, and the LEGO Museum in Denmark. Materialism follows BIG’s earlier exhibitions, Yes Is More (2009), Hot to Cold (2015), and Formgiving (2019), each exploring architecture as a bridge between art, science, and imagination.
Set against the evolving skyline of Suzhou, the museum embodies BIG’s philosophy of contextual modernity, architecture that is simultaneously innovative and rooted in place.

When the museum opens its doors in 2026, Suzhou will gain not just a new cultural landmark but a living garden of ideas, one where art, material, and human experience intertwine seamlessly along the edge of Jinji Lake.

Project Details
Name: Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art
Location: Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
Size: 60,000 m²
Client: Suzhou Harmony Development Group Co. Ltd
Collaborators: ARTS Group Co., Ltd., Front Inc., Shanghai Shuishi Landscape Design Co., Ltd., Rdesign International Lighting Co., Ltd.
Partners-in-Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Catherine Huang
Design Lead: Matteo Pavanello
Landscape Design: Shanghai Shuishi Landscape Design Co., Ltd.
Photography: Ye Jianyuan, Justin Szeremeta
Materialism Exhibition Team:
Partners-in-Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Kai-Uwe Bergmann, Jakob Lange, Cat Huang
Design Lead: Søren Martinussen, Yongwon Jo, Haochen Yu