Sea World Culture and Arts Center is a waterfront situated multi-use culture and arts center within the greater Sea World development in

Shekou Shekou () is an area at the southern tip of Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, Guangdong Province, China. It faces Yuen Long, Hong Kong across the Deep Bay, China, Shenzhen Bay. It has been designated as a free-t ...

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern province ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. The project is a joint venture between the state owned

China Merchants Group China Merchants Group Limited () is an international state-owned corporation (SOE) of the People's Republic of China. The company is operating under the auspices of the Chinese Ministry of Transport. Founded in 1872 China Merchants Steam Navig ...

and Great Britain's

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

. It is designed by the Japanese architect

Fumihiko Maki is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west. Early life Maki was born in Tokyo. A ...

. Completed in 2017 the structure is built in two parts. The first part the "sculptural podium" contains the museum and retail stores and the second made up of "three cantilevered volumes' houses a theater, a restaurant and a "multi purpose hall". Located in Shekou, Nanshan District,

, this is the

Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international architecture award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produ ...

winning architect Maki's first building in the PRC. The park around the building was also designed by Maki and associates in collaboration with the landscape architecture firm Studio on Site. In front of the building is a statue of Yuan Geng, a foundational figure for Shekou, with a bilingual inscription in Chinese and English. The total cost was 1.3 billion yuan ($196 million

U.S. dollars The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

Museums & Galleries

One museum is the Shekou Museum of Reform and Opening Up, on the center's third floor. Another is the V&A Gallery, managed by Design Society, a group run jointly by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the SWCAC.

Education

The SWCAC hosts educational events for local schools, hosted by Design Society. These include annual events such as the Nanshan School Makerfaire and MakeFashion Edu Runway show, as well as ongoing classes such as Design Thinking classes and student gallery tours.

References

{{reflist 2017 establishments in China Museums in Shenzhen Fumihiko Maki buildings Museums established in 2017 Nanshan District, Shenzhen