Flow of Rye - Agricultural Museum

Nestled in the lush, terraced fields of Shandong, China, the Agriculture Museum stands as a testament to sustainable architecture and reverence for the ancient agricultural landscape. The museum's purpose is to celebrate local culture and serve as an artistic learning space for farming activities. We embraced the challenge of the site's 20-meter level difference by designing a series of platforms and bridges to minimize the building's footprint. The building is elevated by timber and steel hybrid structure as a bridge when it meets the stream's natural flow to preserve the natural hydrology and the original landscape.



The museum's design echoes the undulating waves of rye fields and mountains with curved roofs, creating a harmonious visual rhythm. Responding to the height difference in the topography, adjacent curved roofs create slits in-between that bathe the interior in the sunlight. Following a serpentine path across terraced fields, the building leaps over the stream and captures nature into its courtyard, seamlessly blending the interior and the exterior. This visual continuity between the museum’s educational exhibits and nature creates a living classroom where the story of agriculture unfolds season by season, crop by crop.



From sustainability's perspective, the museum is equipped with a rainwater collection system that is as much a part of the design as the structure itself. The roofs channel rainwater into a series of landscaped aqueducts that mimic the irrigation systems of traditional agriculture. U channel glass becomes a key element in achieving thermal efficiency and soft, diffused daylight within the museum's interior. The timber structure not only minimizes the foundation impact to the terraced mountain, but also helps to reduce the overall embodied carbon of the building.