These pics are an artist’s renditions of the Institute for Nanobiomedical Technology and Membrane Biology. The $12 million building will be erected soon in Chengdu, China.
The protrusions on the building’s exterior, which represent protein molecules embedded in the cell membrane, will contain meeting rooms. (I don’t find the facade very attractive!)
The bridges over the building’s atrium represent the X and Y chromosomes.
The interior garden will contain pools shaped like endosomes and mitochondria (photos by Sloan Kulper).
Well now that I made an ass of myself in another comment, I might as well leave a bunch of comments.
I feel like architecture is an art form best suited to simulation. I mean, this looks incredible, but you know that the real thing won’t compare nicely to this idealized, perfected, and completely pure vision illustrated here. *sigh*
Surely the shape’s important too. It looks like a receptor and/or channel. I can’t tell for sure from the picture, but I’m counting seven subunits. A P2X receptor? Maybe something first identified by a Chinese lab.