China plans to reconstruct its national museum to make it the world's largest. But controversy surrounding the $330 million project is reminiscent of France's decision to do the same with their Louvre.

Although not as old as the Palace of the Louvre, the museum building on the east side of Tian'anmen Square occupies an equally important place in the eyes of many Chinese.

Built in 1959, it was an icon of the Mao-era construction of socialism, and also of the time when the former Soviet Union influenced many aspects of China, including art and architecture.

"We have done enough wrongs in the name of revolution," said a curator at the museum, who preferred not to be named. "We cannot afford to do more in the name of construction."

The revised plan for the reconstruction project, which was partially released last month, retains the look of three sides of the building's exterior the northern, the southern, and the western side facing Tian'anmen Square, which is the most impressive and iconic.

However, according to an artist's impression that has not yet been publicized, only the outer columns will be preserved on the side facing Tian'anmen.

The museum, built on the left side (east) of the Tian'anmen Square, is said to echo with the Great Hall of the People on the right side (west). According to traditional Chinese custom, the left side is reserved for ancestors while the right side for ceremonial activities.

Steps lead from the square to a yard covering about 1,000 square meters, with a dozen columns and buildings on its three other sides.

Its chief designer was the late architect Zhang Kaiji (1912-2006), who designed a dozen other important buildings in the capital, such as the Beijing Observatory and the bleachers of the Tian'anmen Rostrum in the 1950s.

The old buildings of the national museum used to be divided by the National Museum of Chinese History and the National Museum of Chinese Revolutionary History, both of which were founded in 1959.

The two museums were merged into the National Museum of China in 2003.

Under the reconstruction plan, the yard and the buildings of the two museums, except the walls on the northern and southern sides, are to be pulled down and a new building will be constructed.

The yard will essentially be replaced with an expanded museum. "The museum will expand 100 meters to the east and its floor space will increase to 192,000 square meters it will be the largest museum in the world once the project is completed," said Lu Zhangshen, curator of the national museum.

"With China's economic takeoff the new building will be more compatible (than the existing museum) with the status and the influence of the country's national museum," he said.

The existing museum is 313 meters north to south and 149 meters east to west, with a total floor space of 69,000 square meters.

The reconstruction will begin in April and it is due to be completed by 2010. A panel of experts selected the plan, which was drawn up by the Institute of Building Design under the Chinese Academy of Building and German design company GMP, according to a Xinhua report.

Change and preservation

The plan's opponents said the interior of the museum should be improved while the exterior should be largely preserved. "It is true that cities are dynamic and they always need changing," said the anonymous curator, "but you have to have a pool of values to decide what can be gotten rid of and what is too valuable to be demolished."

The national museum, along with the Great Hall of the People, the Military Museum and the Agricultural Exhibition Center, has great historical, social and aesthetic value, he said.

They were all built to commemorate the 10th birthday of the People's Republic of China in 1959. Resources from around the nation were brought to Beijing for their construction, and architects and engineers from the former Soviet Union were actively involved.

When finished, they were greatly publicized as landmark achievements of the socialist society. Together with several other buildings built at the same time in Beijing, they became known as the "10 major buildings".

Amid the wave of construction in today's China, the Prime Hotel, which used to be one of the 10, was pulled down in the 1990s and reconstructed in traditional Chinese style.

Chen Xiao, an economist and member of a central government think-tank, has been lobbying for the preservation of the national museum over the past two years. "You need to have different layers in the city," she said. "So it is not only the courtyards that are to be saved. There are also other layers, like from the '50s, the '60s. These are also part of the stories of the city."

Jeanmarie Duthilleul, French architect and director of the French railway giant SNCF's urban development department, who designed buildings, such as the Gare Montparnasse in Paris and the Capital Museum in Beijing, said conservation was a must, when asked about iconic buildings from the early history of China.

"They should be preserved, definitely," said Duthilleul. "The history has been written on the buildings. Some buildings have been preserved throughout history, while others were knocked out. It is those preserved buildings that tell the past."

(China Daily January 5, 2007)