Designing for the largest young audience in the world

The Shanghai Science and Technology Museum is one of the highest attended institutions of its kind in the world, attracting over six million annual visitors. NorthernLight won the international competition to design the new children’s discovery centre, which it intends to make a benchmark for 21st-century childhood education spaces. The museum, too, wants to showcase future learning practices in China and become known as a world-leading centre for education and innovation. An intensive research period with children, parents and staff kicked off the project, forming a solid base for our concept design.

NorthernLight took out the competition with its concept, Wonderclouds of Shanghai. We envisioned future Shanghai as an indoor park: green, lively, natural and balanced. Our main goal was to create an inspirational space – one that avoids the trappings of stereotypical kids’ design, full of screaming primary colours – to support new ways of family learning. Play and social interaction were central to the concept, which includes a number of different environments. We created a unique blend of quiet, soft, tactile spaces, meditative sounds and high-energy zones that facilitate kinetic play.

Wear and tear can be beautiful The kids’ gallery is by far the most popular space in the museum. Over 3,000 children, parents and teachers use the space daily – which equals a ton of energy to channel. Thousands of daily visitors also greatly impact the physical space; even a Mercedes won’t last for a week inside a gallery. Luckily, there’s a wealth of materials and objects – woods, metals, pebbles – that are more beautiful after use. The gallery’s aesthetic therefore changes over time, evolving like a landscape.