The Tianjin Museum, located at the southern side of the scheduled Tianjin Municipal Administrative andCulturalCenterat Hexi District, covers an area of 5.02 hectares with the total building space of 31,400 square meters. The Museum, a shell structure, is designed in the shape of a giant swan. In front of the Museum is a 10,000 square meters wideSwanLakeand before theLakeis a large green patch with the space of 240,000 square meters. The Museum, expected to be completed in October this year, is to be built into a large modern spot for the collection, protection and research of historic relics as well as a place for education, leisure and touring.

When completed, the Tianjin Museum, a combination of theTianjinArt MuseumandHistoricalMuseum, will contain all the 150,000 pieces of valuable historical and cultural relics of the two museums, and aperiodic exhibitions will be held by turns.

The building of the Tianjin Museumis a product of the cooperation betweenChinaandJapan. From the designing schemes put forward by twelve designing institutes, both domestic and foreign, the related specialists have finally chosen the scheme put forward by a Japanese designing office and the Swan comes out of its egg. In the concept of the world famous Japanese architectural master, the design of shell structure gives one a sensuous pleasure by combining the manmade lake with the entrance corridor, just like a swan with its wings spread out. In addition, the appearance of the building gives one the feeling of a theater. It offers an epoch-making beautiful scenery that can be compared favorably with the Sydney Opera House.

The Tianjin Museum is a three-storeyed building. From the hall on the ground floor, you can get to the top floor, the Historical Exhibition Hall, directly by the staircase. You can not only enjoy the rare historical collections but also enjoy the sunshine coming from the feather-shaped skylight in the dome. Then you can get down by the stairway to the second floor, where there are exhibition halls of historical and cultural relics as well as folk custom exhibits, showing mainly the rare collections of the historical museum and the art museum. In accordance with the duration of the exhibition, the exhibition halls can be divided into two kinds. The first kind is arrayed for basic display with the exhibits kept relatively stable while the exhibits of the second kind can be readjusted and changed as needed. The two exhibition halls are relatively independent with their respective special accesses and passageways. Finally, you can return to the ground floor, which has a space of 10,000 square meters used for warehouse to store exhibits, offices and reading room. You can take a short rest and have a cup of coffee here in the lounge, which offers a unique visual field for enjoying the surrounding sceneries of the Museum.