More New Arts Centres

This morning we drove out to the hills west of Nanjing to check out the brand new Sifang Art Museum, designed by Steven Holl Architects. It's part of a park, created by wealthy property developer Lu Jun and run by his affable young son, Lu Xun (fresh out of Cambridge). And there are 22 other bespoke buildings dotted around the park, designed by the likes of David Adjaye, SANAA and Ai Weiwei - a bit like The Commune which we experienced last week, only this has a museum in the middle. The opening exhibition is a small but perfectly formed collection of contemporary pieces from Jun's own collection plus some borrowed works.
From there to the whopping great building site from which the whopping great Jiangsu Provincial Grand Theatre will rise over the next year or so. Looking at the plans, it has the feint air of a Zaha Hadid design (who bid but lost out to a Shanghai-based practice) and will house an opera hall, concert hall, theatre and multi-purpose space. We met with the Deputy Project Manager in a small, old building in the middle of the site, like a raft in the middle of an ocean. Its days are numbered.