large plains, small grains, and the in-between:
BAU686 Longgang Arts Centre, Shenzhen

Longgang District, Shenzhen, China

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Discipline

Architecture

Typology

Culture

City

Longgang District, Shenzhen, China

Date

2020

Status

Second Place Invited Competition

Client

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd

Program

1600-seat Grand Theater, 600-seat Small Theater, 300-seat Black-box Theater, Art Exhibition Center, Art Education Center, etc.

Located in the Longgang District of Shenzhen, the project provides a range of visual and performing arts facilities and a high-quality cultural landmark for the fast-growing Banxuegang Technology City. The programs comprise a grand theatre, small theatre, black box theatre, major digital art gallery, traditional art gallery, art school, function centre, art supplies, food and beverage and retail support spaces.

The design seeks to provide a cultural venue that welcomes the public to stay to enjoy the outdoor exhibitions, activities, and performances, or to relax and explore the wide variety of public garden spaces situated on three levels. The design provides each major program with an independent identity within the larger arts complex. By accommodating the primary programs in individual buildings, a village assemblage emerges: a virtual arts campus or city of art.

Inspired by the lively alleys of Shenzhen’s urban villages, the urban strategy creates a highly permeable small grain urban environment. It allows the public to walk into and across the art centre between the blocks, allowing people to explore and discover what is on offer, especially those passing through from the metro to other destinations.

A culture plaza is located at the centre of the arts village, defining the centre of the site and providing opportunity for outdoor performance events. A black box theatre adjacent to the culture plaza has an operable façade, allowing performances and events to flow inside and out.

The performing arts programs are situated on ground level with loading utilizing the site slope to slip underground. These buildings are clad in stone, a traditional material for a traditional art form. Windows take the form of billowing curtains, a pop-art signifier of the activities within.

The visual arts gallery distinguishes itself at the top of the art complex and become a highlight of the entire district. Its horizontal form provides uninterrupted, flexible exhibition facilities. The continuous elevated volume of the art gallery creates a surprising in-between space: a weather protected sculpture garden on the network of rooftops below. The sculpture garden virtually extends the Golden Hill landscape into the arts centre and smoothly connects to it via a bridge. The rooftop of the art gallery is a sky garden providing a third public outdoor space, an extensive plain of potential, suitable for large scale artworks and events. The elevated building will house the region’s largest digital art gallery. It heroically expresses modernity with long engineering spans and white glass cladding with embedded LED lighting. The building will be a horizontal beacon as it showcases dynamic works in this new art medium.

Private Landscapes

2015

Nanjing

Playgrounds

2020

Suzhou

Public Landscapes

2000-2005

Shanghai

Structures & Pavillions

2019

2023

Office

2005-2010

2021

Shenzhen

Culture

Public

Planning

Hangzhou

Urban Design

Huai’an

Xi'an

Xinyu

Education

2013

Retail

Hospitality

Mixed Use

Sports

Education

2018

Jiangyin

Yixing

2017

Taizhou

Office

Culture

Retail

Melbourne

2016

2011

Residential

Infrastructure

Kyneton

Hotel

Hotel

Wuxi

Healthcare

2014

2012

Healthcare

Fuding

Shaoxing

Chongqing

Kunshan

Wuhan

Cixi

Ningbo

Meishan

Canberra

Jingzhou

Chengdu

Hospitality

1990-2000

Xiamen

Residential

Hopetoun

Caofeidian

an excessive minimalism:
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more Piazza Navona than Levittown
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clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
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landscape, urbanity, networks, the suitcase, and the paper-bag:
BAU592 Qingpu Zhaoxiang Sports Park, Supermarket + Hotel

more than a frozen moment:
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look! up in the sky!
BAU210 Shanghai Hongxuan Office Building

Made in China, no question – Invented in China, of course:
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a hybrid infrastructure:
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large plains, small grains, and the in-between:
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on reflection:
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Place, typologies, programs, and public life:
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more than just a technopolis:
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a second network embracing history, smalllness, and complexity:
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a park for everyone and everyone in their park:
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disorder – not randonmness but beyond order:
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mosaics of teaching, networks of learning:
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walled cities within a walled city:
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co-existence without incompatibility:
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space-time conflict:
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clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
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Journeys AND destination, not just destinations:
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continuous loops and internal courts:
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weaving and stitching:
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a constructed and cultured topography:
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it takes a village to educate a child:
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city typologies, cultural traditions, contemporary theories, and spaceships:
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artificial plateau:building more site:
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it is the least we could do: minimalism in an environment of expressionism
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more Piazza Navona than Levittown
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classrooms AND the in-between: teaching and learning beyond the classroom
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other institutions for this new century:
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building the unfinished:
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minimal AND maximal:
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small in scale large in monumentality:
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multiple rooms of difference:
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active cultural edges, passive natural centres:
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intimate, cool, sheltered and lively:
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formal teaching and informal learning:
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an exercise in robustness:
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effortless complexity: learning from water-town:
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no longer but not only:
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actualizing the virtual:
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geometry, history, art, craft, iconography, and pragmatics: an exploration of intention, coding, narrative, and meaning
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there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in:
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surreal adjacencies:
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mini-city of culture:
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keeping a low profile:
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positive space, human scale, and a blue-green net:
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dis-integrated guest houses :
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don’t look at me, don’t look at me:
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new buildings, old topography:
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defining the perimeter, programming the centre, inhabiting them both:
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turning outside-in:
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beyond PODS, networks, and nodes:
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podium and bill(ding)board:
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inner sanctuary, outer crust:
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an excessive minimalism:
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a plane of reference:
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rips in the fabric by place:
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other ideas of hospital:
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architecture AND terrain:
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crust: in-between and on the edge
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eco urbanism:
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microcosm:
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beyond the picturesque:
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don’t just re-use the typology, improve it!
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building a community not just housing:
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upside down program – ‘private’ circulation becoming ‘public’ circulation:
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extra-large private space as public space:
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mini-me:
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staggering:
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urban camouflage:
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the resort at the end of the yellow dirt road:
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critical regionalism and abstraction:
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hospital for the ill, health care for the healthy, aged care for the elderly: BAU469 Zhaoxiang Hospital

tear open the package: BAU247 Qingpu NGS Supermarket

urban sponge:
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lyrical islands in pragmatic seas:
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fractured enormity:
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ring roads AND peripheral parks:
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simple box OR 3 points in space – you choose:
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many utopias:
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a close family:
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stretching, squeezing, bending, trimming:
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BOTH networks AND objects:
BAU497 Wyndham Cove Eco Sub-urb

ethics, democracy, difference:
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warp and woof:
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sustainable technologies for clean living:
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network of learning:
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not in galleries, but a way of seeing:
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shopping sandwich:
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celebrating the collective, the intimate, the sustainable, and the local:
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21st century Ponte Vecchio:
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antidote: not another ghetto city:
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at last …finally …some diversity:
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recycling and beyond
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an assemblage of difference:
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streets as shelters, bars as amphitheaters, landscapes as playgrounds:
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reduce, reuse, recycle:
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binary oppositions defining a field of operation – all we wanted was a park:
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the hotel as microcosm of the city:
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…very strange:
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the beautiful and the extraordinary:
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a dynamic yet stable vehicle:
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palimpsest:
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innovation both inside and out:
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exquisite corpse
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landscape becomes urban design becomes architecture:
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repetition and difference:
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no longer drowning – waving:
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yet another point of view:
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ordinary not heroic, symbolic not monumental:
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woven threads:
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private precincts, public networks:
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creative networks:
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maximize commuication and cross fertilization:
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