Looking back at One Take Architects' pop-up digital art museum in Beijing, inspired by the Himalayan landscape

In 2019, Hangzhou-based One Take Architects completed the Mandala Pop-up Digital Art Museum, which was a temporary structure showcasing an immersive multi-media exhibition inspired by the Himalayan landscape and arts and culture. The architects envisioned the pop-up museum as a utopian, isolated garden in the heart of bustling Beijing.

Featuring facade lines inspired by the Tibetan Himalayan mountain Namcha Barwa, the museum was designed like a set of blocks that can be split and reorganized into a “dKyil-‘khor”, an inner palace in Chinese Buddhism and which translates into “mandala” in English. 

Concealed from the outside, the building measured over 50 meters long, was less than 5 meters tall, and had a width of less than 9 meters. As visitors move through the art museum, they could chart their own path to create their own experience, encountering immersive digital art, changing lights, reflective mirrors, sca...