Long Museum West Bund is located at the center of the West Bund Culture Corridor in Binjiang, Xuhui District, Shanghai——No.3398, Longteng Avenue. Designed by Liu Yi-chun, a Chinese architect from Atelier Deshaus, the building covers an area of 33,000 square meters with up to 16,000 square meters for exhibition. Long Museum West Bund was officially opened to the public on March 2014.
The main building is characterized by a unique “umbrella-vaulted” structure, which is divided into four floors. The surface of the peculiar vault of the first and second floors is built by fair-faced concrete with a fine and smooth texture. Visually, it is in concert with the fashion space, “Hopper Corridor” (doulang), which was transformed from the former “Coal Hopper” (meiloudou) construction at Beipiao Port, thus creating a rational and tranquil sense of industry and primitivism as well as a sharp contrast between power and lightness. Meanwhile, it endows the museum with an acute quality of contemporar-iness and creativity. The basement floor is the exhibition space where returns to a “white box” display space .
Long Museum West Bund is no longer a closed or introverted art museums, but rather a space that functionally embraces openness and public involvement. This is exactly the original intention and sincere wishes of the couple founders, Mr. Liu Yiqian and Mrs. Wang Wei, when they set up the Museum.