Recently, the winners of the 2025 Finland Arch Design Award were announced in Helsinki. The Haier Culture Gallery, designed by Zhou Yanyang and Yu Lizhan of the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, was awarded the Gold Prize in the Interior Design category for its exceptional design concept and profound cultural expression.
Previously, the Haier Culture Gallery was shortlisted for the 2023 World Architecture Festival (WAF) in the UK and has since won the 2023 German iF Design Award, the 2022 American MUSE Design Platinum Award, and the 2023 American IDA Honorable Mention. This latest accolade, the Arch Design Award Gold Prize, marks yet another prestigious international recognition for the project.
The Arch Design Award, organized by the Design Architects Association (DAA) of Finland, is one of the most influential and representative awards in the fields of architecture and spatial design. The name “Arch” (meaning “archway”) symbolizes a core element in classical architectural structures, seemingly simple yet pivotal in both structural mechanics and visual experience. It represents the bridge between aesthetics and functionality that design creates. The award seeks to discover and honor outstanding works that demonstrate exceptional creativity, structural logic, environmental responsiveness, and the integration of green technologies. Its rigorous evaluation criteria encompass functionality, material use, sustainability, environmental harmony, and cultural expression, emphasizing that projects must not only excel aesthetically but also demonstrate structural ingenuity and social value.
The Haier Culture Gallery Wins 2025 Arch Design Award Gold Prize
The Haier Culture Gallery (Haier Culture Gallery), located within the Haier Information Industrial Park in Qingdao, spans 3,600 square meters and was officially completed in January 2022. As a corporate culture exhibition space, it breaks away from the traditional narrative focus on products or technology typical of corporate museums. Instead, it centers on “ideas” as its core content, transforming the space into a highly refined performance of thought. It is not merely a physical representation of corporate culture but also a “field of ideas” that evokes spiritual resonance and stimulates cultural imagination.
The exhibition revolves around Haier’s core philosophy of “RenDanHeYi” (People-Oriented and Goal-Aligned), connecting three key stages of the company’s development. Through iconic spatial nodes such as “Smashing the Refrigerator” and “Moon Reflected in Ten Thousand Rivers,” the exhibition employs multiple approaches including “experiential displays,” “participatory exhibits,” “immersive theater,” “digital twins,” and “post-exhibition tracking”, to create a walkable, perceptible, and resonant field of ideas for visitors.
The gallery is divided into 62 exhibition units, narrating pivotal historical moments in the company’s growth. The design team adopted a curatorial logic of “spatial rhythm + emotional guidance,” seamlessly blending “immersion,” “ritual,” and “critical thinking.” This approach ensures that as visitors move through the space, they also undergo a progressive journey of cognitive and emotional engagement.
The exhibition is not an endpoint but a starting point for intellectual dialogue. Since its opening in 2022, the Haier Culture Gallery has hosted 181 group visits, with 54 of these involving effective “post-exhibition tracking,” forming a complete “pre-exhibition, during-exhibition, post-exhibition” visitor engagement chain. Visitors have widely praised the exhibition as “philosophically profound,” “highly impactful,” “deeply immersive,” and “layered in its progression.” Notably, exhibits such as “Moon Reflected in Ten Thousand Rivers” and “Smashing the Refrigerator” are regarded as the most emotionally charged and socially resonant spatial nodes.
