Half is plane hand-drawn line draft, half is manual wooden model, in Suzhou urban construction museum on the wall, the ancient city of landmark tower is “anatomy”, numerous delicate bucket bracket, profound cornices, dignified beautiful pot door are careful recovery, let the seven level eight pavilion of the internal structure clearly present in front of the audience.
Recently, Suzhou Urban Construction Museum opened, which is one of the few professional museums with the theme of “urban construction”. With the window of Suzhou as the core element, the museum builds a “time tunnel” through the ancient and modern times, connecting the exhibition halls of “city discipline millennium”, “modern Sioux City”, “city growth”, “city living room” and “City of one hundred museums”.
In the preface hall, the crisscross “Pingjiang Map” forms a gray architectural model of the word “city”, which is the main visual symbol of the Suzhou Urban Construction Museum. The museum is located in Pingjiang Historical and Cultural District, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, covering an area of about 1600 square meters. It is built on the basis of ——, a key national cultural relic protection unit.
The map of Pingjiang Prefecture (now Suzhou) in the Southern Song Dynasty is hidden in the Suzhou stele carved Museum. It is the largest and most complete ancient stele carved city map in China, reflecting the double chessboard pattern of parallel land, water and water and adjacent river streets in Suzhou. Pingjiang Road is the traditional block that inherits this characteristic. The alleys adjacent to Pingjiang Road are dotted with the former residences of many famous people. The Pan house of Pan Linzhao family, a Hui merchant, was built in the 52nd year of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (1787). It was huge and beautifully decorated. Today, the house of a wealthy businessman in the Qing Dynasty has been transformed into a museum, reflecting the concept of “making the ancient city develop innovatively in protection”.
The hall of “Shiji Qianlong” shows five miniature models, which were built in the Spring and Autumn Period, the Ruiguang Pagoda of the Three Kingdoms period, the Baodai Bridge of the Tang Dynasty, the Confucian Temple of the Northern Song Dynasty and the Pan Gate of the Yuan Dynasty to form a three-dimensional picture scroll. Five local Chronicles, including the Records of Wu Di, the Annals of Wu Jun, and the Three horizontal and four histograms of the River in Suzhou, leaving the footprints of these ancient buildings, tell the long history of urban construction in Suzhou.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Suzhou being rated as a national historical and cultural city. The “Modern Sioux City” hall has reviewed the urban changes of nearly half a century with rich photos and documents, and the yellowing documents have witnessed the establishment of the protection route of the ancient city. In 1986, the first version of Suzhou’s urban master plan was approved by The State Council, defining the basic policy of “protecting the features of the ancient city and actively building a modern new area”.
The 76-meter-high North Temple Tower protects the skyline of the ancient city. Outside the 58-meter-high development building, the 302-meter-high Oriental Gate and the 450-meter-high international financial center were built. In the “City Growth” hall, the crystal sand table model connects the highest buildings in Suzhou in different periods with a timeline, showing the constantly refreshing city height.
The new media interactive device in the exhibition hall allows the audience to immerse themselves in the vitality of contemporary Suzhou urban construction. On the exhibition wall is a row of yellow meters, and photographs of urban infrastructure, including bridges, roads, rail transit and more, can be seen through the eyepiece in the black cylinder. Press the button of “Urban Science and Education”, and the pictures of landmark buildings in the field of Suzhou Museum, Suzhou Culture and Art Center, Binglin Library and other fields of Soochow University will be played frame by frame.
See a museum and view a hundred museums, explore a hundred museums and know a city. In the hall of “The City of one hundred Museums”, a dynamic “Suzhou City Construction map” is full of three whole walls, and more than 100 museums in Suzhou are scattered on the map. With the palm near the wall, the Chinese wind illustration will become a 360-degree rotating three-dimensional animation. Click on the geometric buildings with white walls and black tiles of the new Suzhou Museum, designed by architect I. M. Pei, and click on 10 rectangular box buildings to seal the Suboxi Museum, which opened in September last year. Here, the audience can “visit” the hundred pavilions and former residences of celebrities in Suzhou, with a full view of the overall scenery of the city.
Sun Min, director of the Office of Suzhou Municipal Housing and Construction Bureau, said that the design of Suzhou Urban Construction Museum fully embodies the concept of “people’s city, people’s city for the people”, and also reflects the ingenuity of the city builders. It plays a positive role in promoting the protection of ancient cities, urban renewal and the activation and utilization of ancient buildings and old houses.