Reviving Ancient Art Heritage: Hanyangling Museum by Biwei Zhu

Bringing History to Life with Innovative Exhibition Design

Biwei Zhu's inspiration for the design of Hanyangling Museum was to create a space that could fully reflect the material culture, political systems, and spiritual features of the Han Dynasty. The design focuses on multi-media interactive areas and reproduction of archaeological sites, providing the ancient art heritage with new vitality. The exhibition aims to bring a new visual experience to visitors, helping them realize more stories behind the relics.

The unique properties of the Hanyangling Museum design lie in its clear thematic focus on the first golden age created by Emperor Hanjing in the Han Dynasty in Chinese history - "the rule of Wen and jing". The exhibition showcases various cultural relics of Han Dynasty terracotta figures unearthed from archaeological excavations, which are given a proper visual presentation through the exhibition design of the space.

The realization of the design involved the use of stone materials on the wall and grey plastic materials on the ground to create a quiet and peaceful atmosphere. The exhibition cabinet was designed in three sizes, with different numbers of professional spotlights installed according to the density of the cultural relics on display, to highlight the exquisite shape of the pottery figurines of the Han Dynasty.

The project area is 1600sqm2 in total, with two floors, one of which is underground. The museum receives a large number of domestic and foreign tourists every day, and has professional museum commentators. The space is full of the strong Han Dynasty traditional culture atmosphere, which is helpful for people to study deeply the Chinese culture. Unique visual effects and strong technical backstage support, such as multimedia VR roaming, archaeological site restoration, etc., display a variety of exquisite ceramic relics, making the ancient Chinese art heritage glow with new vitality.

The project started in August 2018 and finished in July 2019 in Xi'an City. It was a challenge to classify the exhibits according to the information of these exhibits and create the corresponding visual atmosphere. The exhibition required a high quality of technology, to meet the safety protection performance of cultural relics, and to control the light reflection of glass to avoid the visual interference during the exhibition. Despite these challenges, the design was successful and was awarded Silver in A' Cultural Heritage and Culture Industry Design Award in 2020.