Construction of the main structure of the second outlet of the Chinese Museum of Natural History in Zhejiang is complete.

Designed by David Chipperfield Architects, the museum is built into a sloping hillside in the city of Hangzhou and comprises an inner courtyard as well as several low-rise pavilions with exhibition halls and galleries.

The galleries have been rendered in red ochre in order to match the clay earth of the hillside while the roofs are green to blend into the surrounding countryside when viewed from above.

"The large visitor numbers expected, combined with the scale of some of the exhibits, gave rise to a loose infrastructure of generous circulation and spacious exhibition halls," said a David Chipperfield Architects statement.

"Set at right angles to the slope and staggered horizontally, the pavilions follow the natural topography, negotiating a 12-metre difference in height from north to south, and minimising the impact on the landscape."

The new attraction, the origins of which date to 1929, will feature an expanded collection of over 200,000 geological, ecological and paleontological artefacts and will include some of the discoveries from the Cretaceous period that have been unearthed in Zhejiang.