British built East China museum to open to public on October 1
30 Aug 2008, 1416 Hrs

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Hangzhou (China), Aug.30 (ANI): A British architect has completed the Liangzhu Culture Museum in east China's Zhejiang Province and it will open to the public from October 1.

The museum will contain relics of ancient villages, nobles' tombs with exquisite jade burial artifacts, imperial graveyards, sacrificial altars and large-scale mountain structures in Liangzhu Town marks essential evidence of China's 5,000 years of history," China News quoted Zhang Zhongpei, the ex-curator of the Forbidden City Museum in Beijing, as saying.

The museum, composed of four blocks all with a width of 18 meters but of different heights, emerges as a toy-brick-like sculpture that is visible from a fair distance. The courtyards in each block are a part of a tour route that links the four exhibition halls.

Designed by David Chipperfield, 54, who has also designed the glass-skinned Figge Art Museum in the United States and the award-winning National River and Rowing Museum on the banks of the River Thames in Great Britain, among others, the museum in China to him is "neither shocking nor extravagant".

Deputy curator Guo Qinglin said the museum would house a collection of archaeological findings from the Liangzhu cultural site.

This prehistoric civilization that can trace back 4,000 to 5,300 years ago received its name from the local Liangzhu Town in 1936. (ANI)