P05 → Latency: A Museum in the Astroni Crater
Year：2023
This project was submitted to the international competition "Extinction Museum", jointly organized by YAC (Young Architects Competitions) and WWF. The competition brief called for the design of a museum situated in the Astroni Crater, a dormant volcano near Naples, Italy, to address the topic of extinction and raise public awareness on ecological crises.
The proposal was developed by a team composed of Hehan Zhou, Haoming Huang, Houjie Xie, Jiqian Huang, and Weimei Cai.
Set within the Astroni Crater in southern Italy—a dormant volcano now covered in dense forest—The Chosen One is a speculative museum design that rethinks how architecture can engage with deep time, extinction, and the fragility of life. Rather than presenting history through static display, the spatial sequence becomes a journey of descent and emergence, where visitors traverse long corridors, dark caverns, and light-filled atriums as they move deeper into the Earth and the story of the dinosaurs.
The museum reinterprets Henri Lefebvre’s concept of “spatial practice”, embodying extinction not only through exhibited fossils but also through the space itself. Here, space becomes evidence: the absence of life is carved into terrain, walls, and movement. The volcanic slope, partially buried and partially exposed, serves both as architectural enclosure and narrative medium. Over time, it hints at renewal—the crater is a wound and a womb, where future life may grow again.