Shenzhen Natural History Museum building news

Shenzhen Natural History Museum Building, China

28 July 2026

Architecture: 3XN-B+H Architects -Zhubo Design Consortium

Location: Pingshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China

First look: Shenzhen Natural History Museum opens to the public

Photos by Adam Mørk

The Shenzhen Natural History Museum was undertaken by the 3XN-B+H Architects -Zhubo Design Consortium, with 3XN as lead designer and B+H Architects serving as lead consultant, executive architect and landscape architect. Zhubo provided local technical and compliance support.

SHENZHEN, 28th July 2026 – Shenzhen Natural History Museum officially opens to the public today, marking the arrival of one of the world’s largest new natural history museums and the largest in South China.

As a flagship of Shenzhen’s investment in a ‘new era’ of cultural institutions, the museum gives the city a major new cultural landmark – one that matches its leadership in science, education and public life, and strengthens its profile as a global centre for innovation and design.

Designed by the 3XN, B+H Architects and Zhubo Design consortium, the museum spans over 100,000-square-metres and rises from the surrounding river-delta landscape beside Yanzi Lake as a continuous terrain of sloping roof, terraces and plazas. Conceived as a civic landscape as much as a museum, it brings architecture, ecology and civic space into one connected experience, with a walkable public roof that extends the natural ground plane and invites everyday use beyond the threshold of the galleries.

From the city, the museum appears as a flowing geological form, with its granite façade and carved openings hinting at the exhibition spaces embedded within. Its flowing silhouette draws on the local river systems and surrounding hills, while internally, five cone-shaped volumes organise the museum’s principal exhibition halls and define its spatial character. Moving between the cones, visitors experience the building as a sequence of cave-like passages, atria, terraces and framed views, turning the story of natural history into an immersive journey through form, light and landscape.

Kim Herforth Nielsen, Founder, Senior Partner, Creative Director at 3XN, said:

“Nothing in nature is square. Nature is amorphous, dynamic, and always in formation. From the beginning, the ambition was to create not a building, but a piece of landscape that had always been there – shaped by local geology, water and time. That idea has been carried all the way from the competition stage to the museum that opens today, a place where the story of our planet is experienced as a physical journey through terrain, light and space.”

Inside, eight themed exhibition halls guide visitors through 4.6 billion years of Earth’s history, from the origins of the universe to the emergence of life, dinosaurs, human evolution and the ecological systems that shape Shenzhen and the wider world. The museum exhibits animal, plant, mineral and fossil specimens, alongside large‑scale installations and media environments that connect global natural history narratives with the specific mountains, rivers and seas of South China.

The architects worked closely with exhibition designers Atelier Brückner and Museum Studio on the scenography for the main galleries. The curved walls, cone geometries and vertical volumes are used to create immersive, media‑rich environments that bring the exhibition narrative to life. Across the museum, specimens, large‑scale installations and cinematic media are interwoven with the architecture, transforming visitors from observers into active participants in the natural history story.

David Stavros, Senior Design Principal, former Executive Vice President, Asia, at B+H Architects, said:

“Transforming this ambition into a world-class natural history museum demanded far more than delivering a building of exceptional scale and complexity. It called for architecture, engineering, landscape, exhibition planning and construction expertise to work seamlessly together. Central to this is the roof park, which extends the museum into Shenzhen’s civic landscape, inviting visitors to experience it as part of the city itself. The result demonstrates what multidisciplinary collaboration can achieve when design ambition, delivery expertise and technical rigour come together.”

The museum is the result of a close international collaboration, bringing together 3XN’s design leadership from Copenhagen, B+H Architects’ leadership of project delivery and landscape design, and Zhubo Design’s local technical and compliance knowledge in Shenzhen. Realising the project required sophisticated coordination across disciplines, geographies and construction phases, preserving the clarity of the original competition-winning concept while delivering a building of significant technical and architectural complexity.

Further views of the museum’s interior spaces, exhibitions and rooftop landscape will be shared in the coming weeks as the museum welcomes its first visitors and establishes itself as a major cultural destination for both local communities and international visitors.

Nan Zhaoxu, Director of Shenzhen Natural History Museum, said:

“Shenzhen Natural History Museum is designed to interpret the laws of natural evolution and present the geographies of Shenzhen in a global ecological perspective. It brings together collections and research that trace 4.6 billion years of Earth’s history, but it is the architecture that makes this story tangible. By turning the museum into a living educational landscape – from the roof park to the cone‑shaped galleries – it allows visitors from Shenzhen and around the world to experience science, nature and place as one continuous journey that is specific to its place.”

Shenzhen Natural History Museum, Guangdong – Building Information

Project information

Project name: Shenzhen Natural History Museum

Location: Pingshan District, Shenzhen, China

Design Consortium: 3XN, B+H Architects, and Zhubo Design

3XN (Lead Designer; Concept Design), B+H Architects (Lead Consultant, Executive Architect, Landscape Architect, Interior Design), Zhubo Design (Local technical compliance and delivery)

Engineer: Zhubo Design (Structural, MEP)

Client: Shenzhen Government /Bureau of Public Works of Shenzhen Municipality

Tenant: Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism, and Sports

Gross Floor Area: 105,300 m²

Construction start: March 2022

Completion: July 2026

Photography: Adam Mørk

3XN

About 3XN

3XN is an architecture practice founded in Denmark with a global commitment to innovative, sustainable, and impactful design. This multidisciplinary, diverse and international outlook informs and enriches our collaborative culture and multi-dimensional approach to design. Our work is driven by the fundamental belief that architecture must contribute positively to people, places, and the planet.

3XN, founded in 1986 by Kim Herforth Nielsen, offers nearly four decades of experience in designing and building human-focused architecture. Our approach is defined by a holistic methodology that values aesthetics, behaviour, curiosity, and circularity. We believe that architecture isn’t just about space but actively shapes the behaviours and experiences of those who inhabit it. Aesthetics and function go hand in hand in our design process. They work in concert, each reinforcing the other, to ensure that spaces are not only visually inspiring but also conducive to well-being and social cohesion. Central to our design philosophy is an ongoing curiosity—an intellectual openness to new ideas and approaches that challenges us to continually push the boundaries of what architecture can achieve. This curiosity fuels a collaborative, transparent process that encourages the exchange of ideas and enables us to innovate, particularly in the realm of sustainable design. Our practice is driven by a commitment to research and exploration, constantly seeking ways to improve upon existing methods, technologies, and materials. With offices in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Sydney, New York, London and Amsterdam, their work combines the playful and poetic with the renewable and resilient.

GXN is a strategic consultancy for the built environment, founded by 3XN in 2007, with offices in Copenhagen and London. GXN leads teams in impactful strategic innovation and design-led research to design, build, and live in ways that better align human and planetary needs. GXN’s research-based processes and evidence-based insights, combined with 3XN’s design expertise, have allowed the consultancy to generate holistic visions that turn concepts into forward-looking architecture with provable impact and demonstrable value.

https://3xn.com/

About B+H Architects

B+H Architects is a global, award-winning design and consulting practice with more than 70 years of experience in architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, planning, and advisory services. The firm combines design excellence with technical rigour to create functional, enduring environments that are deeply connected to place.

Operating from studios in Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore, B+H’s multidisciplinary teams collaborate across geographies, sectors, and scales to transform spaces, communities, and economies through bold, purposeful design. With iconic landmark projects in more than 30 countries, B+H brings global perspective and local insight to every project.

B+H Architects is a SJ Group company, part of a diverse collective of problem solvers for the built environment, continually reimagining ways to create a smarter, more sustainable future.

https://bharchitects.com/
https://www.sjgroup.com/

About Zhubo Design

Founded in 1996 and listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2019, Zhubo Design Co., Ltd. is a comprehensive design organization with over 1,600 professionals across architecture, urban planning and interior design. Holding Class-A qualifications in construction engineering and urban planning, Zhubo delivers full-process design services from concept through construction documentation and on-site coordination, with recognised expertise in prefabricated building, BIM, eco-building, sponge city and intelligent building technologies.

http://www.zhubo.com/en/index

3XN Architects

Shenzhen Natural History Museum building, China images / information received 280726 from 3XN

Location: Pingshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of China, East Asia.