Holm Architecture Office (HAO) and AI have been invited to create a proposal for the city of Daqiuzhuang in northern China. Sited in a newly developed part of the city, the new cultural building takes its form from the traditional Chinese courtyard square. By lifting the square in the diagonal corners, dual entry points to the building are created which leads visitors and locals through the building’s ground level public programs to the mid- and upper- level exhibition spaces while extending the existing North- South axis of the surrounding city. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The DQZ Culture Center is situated approximately 200 kilometers south of Beijing in northern China. A rural village in a desolated salty marshland only 30 years ago, Daqiuzhuang has grown from village to city rapidly due to its early investments in and production of the city’s main commodity: steel. The DQZ Culture Center building occupies a redesigned plaza that mimics the historic marshland of the city in its tone and variety of plant life, combining landscape, trees, flexible water features, and gathering spaces into a new urban center with the 20,000 M2 / 200,000 SF DQZ Cultural Center at its core.
