Museum of Contemporary Art & Planning Exhibition

This guide to the Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition in Shenzhen uses room-sized scale models next door to trace how rice farms and fishing villages became a metropolis of more than seventeen million people after Beijing named Shenzhen China's first Special Economic Zone in 1980. You'll hear about the Austrian firm Coop Himmelblau, which won the 2007 design competition for the building itself, and about the silvery sculptural Cloud floating over the main atrium, which houses a cafe, bookstore, and two institutions under one roof. Stand in the atrium and look up at the Cloud before moving into the exhibition halls next door.