Shanghai Astronomy Museum Won the International Architectural Excellence Award

On December 14, 2023, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced the 2023 American Institute of Architects New York State (AIANYS) Annual Architectural Awards. The Shanghai Astronomy Museum won the Architectural Excellence Award in the International Project Category. The award was founded in 1968 and is selected annually. Among the 25 projects awarded this year, the Shanghai Astronomy Museum is the only Chinese project.

The unique architectural design of the Shanghai Astronomy Museum comes from the formal abstraction of orbital motion. With the design concept of "connecting people and the universe", it exquisitely combines the aesthetic elements of architecture with popular science display. The main building adopts a beautiful spiral shape to form the orbit of the celestial body. The unique round skylight, the IMAX Dome Theater, and inverted dome form the "three-body" structure of the museum's internal space. What’s even more ingenious is that the positions of the round skylight, the IMAX Dome Theater and the nearby Dishui Lake are exactly like the proportional relationship between the moon, the earth and the sun.

In recent years, the Shanghai Astronomy Museum has been widely praised by the society and highly recognized in the industry. It has won many international and domestic awards in different fields, showing the latest achievements of China's scientific and technological development and telling a good Chinese story. 

On the international front, in 2022, the Shanghai Astronomy Museum won the 29th Thea "Outstanding Achievement Award", becoming one of the 13 projects in the world and the first domestic museum/science and technology museum to win this award; the architectural design plan of Shanghai Astronomy Museum won the 2022 "Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award"; the brand visual design plan of Shanghai Astronomy Museum won the 2019 "German iF Award". Domestically, in 2023, the Shanghai Astronomy Museum was selected as a national smart tourism immersive experience new space cultivation pilot project by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism; the Shanghai Astronomy Museum’s display project won the Architectural Decoration Industry Science and Technology Award of the year; the Shanghai Astronomy Museum’s display lighting project also won the 2022 Central Illumination Award, etc.