On the western edge of Haikou’s coastline, a silver ring now appears to hover above pools of water and shaded public space. Inside, visitors move through a continuous spiral that carries them from deep space and oceans to tropical forests, agriculture, and hands-on learning environments for children.
The newly opened Hainan Science Museum, designed by Chinese architecture practice MAD led by architect Ma Yansong, has already drawn more than 350,000 visitors during its first four months of trial operations in Haikou, China. Peak days have reportedly attracted more than 5,800 visitors. The project was developed alongside executive architect CCDI Group.
Located beside Wuyuan River National Wetland Park, the project arrives as Hainan continues to strengthen its role within China’s broader scientific and educational infrastructure. The island is home to the country’s only coastal spaceport, which has supported more than 40 launches since 2016, including lunar and Mars missions. Against that backdrop, the museum positions science less as a distant institutional subject and more as part of everyday civic life.
Instead of functioning solely as a destination building, the museum was conceived around its immediate neighbourhood. More than 30 schools and kindergartens sit within a three-kilometre radius of the site, shaping the project’s role as a daily public space for students, families, and residents.
A science museum designed around movement and public space
The building’s defining feature is a single spiralling circulation route that connects every gallery. Visitors entering from the upper levels descend gradually through ring-shaped exhibition spaces, with exhibition design developed by Shanghai Kaiyi Architectural Design, while those starting from the ground floor move upwards through the same sequence in reverse.
The arrangement allows the museum to present science as a connected experience. According to Ma Yansong, the intention was to create a space where knowledge, movement, and interaction could flow into one another more freely.
The architectural strategy extends beyond the galleries themselves. A large canopy lifts the main volume above ground level, creating a shaded public plaza underneath the museum. Parents wait there for children, students gather after school, and pedestrians pass through the site as part of daily movement along the waterfront.
The effect is closer to an urban civic square than a traditional institutional entrance hall.
Interior spaces organised around a continuous spiral
Inside, the absence of columns allows the ring-shaped galleries to unfold as uninterrupted exhibition landscapes rather than separate rooms. Structurally, the entire spiral volume is supported by three concrete core tubes, allowing visitors to move continuously between subjects without visual interruption.
The museum’s interior experience is organised less like a conventional exhibition sequence and more like a flowing public landscape. As visitors move through the spiral, themes transition from outer space and oceans to Hainan’s rainforests, tropical agriculture, and interactive learning areas for children.
Visitors can experience the museum through two different directional journeys. Those entering from above descend towards hands-on learning spaces, while visitors starting from the ground level gradually move outward towards the cosmos overhead.
Across its 46,528m2, the complex also incorporates a planetarium, a giant-screen cinema, a sunken plaza, outdoor planting areas dedicated to agricultural education, and covered walkways connecting the different programme elements.
Haikou becomes a testing ground for civic architecture
The museum’s reflective exterior envelope, developed with facade consultant RFR Shanghai, is formed from 843 fibre-reinforced polymer panels that shift with daylight and weather conditions. Landscape design for the waterfront setting was developed by EADG.
The project also continues a broader sequence of public works developed by MAD along Haikou’s coastline. Together with Cloudscape of Haikou, a waterfront reading pavilion completed earlier by MAD, the museum contributes to a growing cultural corridor extending westward along the seafront.
For Ma Yansong, whose work has long explored the relationship between cities, landscape, and public life, Haikou is increasingly becoming a testing ground for a more open and experience-led form of civic architecture.
