The planned Comics and Animation Museum in Hangzhou, China recently announced the winner of its contest to design the museum, a Netherlands-based architecture firm called MVRDV that envisioned an $125 million interlocking structure of eight buildings shaped like word balloons built that will allow text images to be projected on to the exterior of the balloons making them "speak."The first building visitors enter will feature a display on the history of comics and animation, displayed along spiral-shaped walkway that rises upward as its chronicle of the two media moves from the past to the future.

Hangzhou currently hosts the annual China International Comic and Animation Festival (CICAF), the largest such festival in the country, and other other offerings at the museum include exhibits relating to video games, and other "balloons" will be devoted to a massive library where visitors can read comics and watch animation, and three movie theaters (including one IMAX theater) that can display films and also host film festivals.

As MVRDV explains on their Youtube page:

One of the balloons is devoted to interactive experience in which visitors can actively experiment with all sorts of animation techniques like blue screen, stop motion, drawing, creating emotions etc. The core attraction of this space is a gigantic 3D zoetrope. The routing of the museum permits short or long visits, visits to the cinema, the temporary exhibition or the roof terrace restaurant. The façade of the museum is covered in a cartoon relief referring to a Chinese vase. The monochrome white concrete façade allows the speech balloons to function: texts can be projected onto the façade.


Who's up for a trip to China next year?

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