In these early years of the twenty-first century, the museum is still too often a place of conservation, consultation and education. Useful, but revolving around a form of cultural convention and consumption. The museum ought to become a place open to life, an exciting place, but also a place of invention, in which exhibiting becomes evidence that the feelings and emotions induced by art are magnified by time, by the complicit proximity of all time periods, all the ages of inventions. And the most genuine of today’s inventors ought absolutely to be able to express themselves there. The onus is on us to invite them into a space that sets them dreaming, because they feel so at home in it, and to offer artists the means to express themselves more than ever, to reveal themselves more clearly and more interestingly than is possible elsewhere. Namoc represents an incredible opportunity for the most ambitious materialization of a place of expression, of communication and appeal, a witness to the vitality of a civilization, that of the biggest population on this earth. The plan proposed today is the result of a year of catalysis, of immersion, dialogue and exploration aimed at translating, synthesizing, symbolizing and then materializing the spirit of the civilization of China… to protect the miracles made with ink throughout the centuries, to reveal the force of a living art… to welcome the artists of tomorrow. It is a milestone which posits architecture from now on as a civilizational medium, as a memorial symbiosis of nature and human expression. Beyond the traditional competition between recognized styles, these exceptional conditions have given rise to this emerging standpoint, this symbiotic response. The role of architecture today is to catalyse and precipitate the spirit of a place, whether it be individual, plural or civilizational.
