Emotional Space: An Approach for Balancing Historic Preservation and New Construction in the Redevelopment of Chinese Culture Museums

We cannot avoid the confrontation between old and new in the redevelopment of Chinese cultural museums. How to balance the two of them becomes a problem in China. However, the current expansion or renovation of Chinese cultural museums remains far from the goal of balancing old and new. Most approaches have employed western museum design strategies to create a place for Chinese art, which delivers a western spiritual and emotional space that differs from the appropriate space for a Chinese cultural context. This mental disconnection not only causes the result of imbalance, but also obstructs the complete access to Chinese art. Therefore, this study focuses on the definition of the Chinese spatial conceptions both in buildings and gardens, demonstrated by an alternative design proposition for the New Suzhou Art Museum in employing the concept of Emotional Space as the primary design principle. Emotional space allows communication among buildings, the environment, and human beings through people’s various senses. Both the old and new parts of museum projects require making the architecture speak to the public. The employment of emotional space becomes an approach to establish the basic design elements for the incorporation of the old and new. This common ground, emotional space, not only provides a possible solution to solve current confrontations, but also points out an approach to ensure cultural museums tell their own stories