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Hong Kong Palace Museum opens to the public

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Jerman Cheung Jerman Cheung East Asia Press Office,Hong Kong
5 July 2022

After five years of planning, design and construction, the Hong Kong Palace Museum opened to the public on 3 July 2022.  Arup’s total engineering services played a central role in bringing the showcase of Chinese art and culture to life.

Located at the harbour front of the West Kowloon Cultural District, the seven-storey building features an exhibition space of 7,800m² across nine galleries. It also houses the Auditorium, Activity Rooms and other ancillary facilities, offering spaces for a rich variety of public programmes to foster visitors’ interest in arts and culture.

Inspired by the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Hong Kong Palace Museum adopts the ‘central axis’ concept and extends it vertically, instead of horizontally, connecting different floors and atriums. Arup’s structural solution is the key to creating unobstructed spaces and views in the galleries and atriums with minimal vertical structure.

Our façade engineers helped realise the highly sophisticated external walls consisting of thousands of golden aluminium panels – all of different shapes, patterns and curvatures, creating an effect of glazed tiles.

Protection of the priceless treasures is a top priority of the museum. Arup’s building services engineers adopted a precise environmental control approach to maintain the appropriate temperature and humidity in the galleries and art storage, providing the optimal environment for artworks. Our bespoke fire safety solutions ensure robust protection of the building, its visitors and exhibits, with minimal aesthetic intrusion into the spaces.

The museum was designed under a comprehensive sustainability framework, focusing on decarbonisation, resource management and wellbeing with visitor experience at the heart. Our sustainability, lighting and acoustic specialists considered varying visitor expectations and alternating collections to ensure thermal, visual and acoustic comfort, allowing visitors to view exhibits in the best possible environment.

Building information modelling (BIM) was fully implemented in the design and construction process, with Arup acting as the BIM manager, improving accuracy, efficiency and quality. 

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We are very proud to have provided total engineering consultancy services for this landmark museum project. With the addition of M+ Museum of Visual Culture and now the Hong Kong Palace Museum, Hong Kong’s reputation as a financial centre is now further enriched with a flourishing arts and cultural scene befitting a world city, placing it in the same sphere as other international powerhouses such as London and New York. ” Paul Tsang Paul Tsang Director