Hangzhou, China
Featuring an immense green roof, Approach Design has added the new hall to the Hangzhou Cloud Town Exhibition Centre, featuring a running track and sports courts.
The building is an addition to the large latticed structure that the studio designed for the first stage of the convention centre in 2015.
With creativity, this exhibition centre has been designed as an open “3D Park” full of attractions.
It intends to return the land occupied by the architecture to the public and encourages people to meet here in order to enjoy various interesting activities.
For its sustainable design, The Cloud Town Convention and Exhibition Center (Phase II) was recently awarded with a 2020 International Architecture Award from The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum.
The project aims to maximise the public value of large-scale urban civic buildings by encouraging people to take advantage of the facilities available.
The indoor exhibition hall can be transformed into an energetic ‘Sports Warehouse’ that provides a range of sports.
This scheme eliminates the negative stereotype of an exhibition centre as a bulky and closed building.
Instead, it generates new energy for the city and intends to maximize the public value of the urban resources behind this large building.
Today in China, almost every city owns one or a couple of exhibition centres, but their average usage rate is below 20%, and people are not willing to get close to it due to its bulky and closed features.
This scheme is a bold attempt – same place, same scale but the answer is not only an exhibition centre, but also the first civic park and stadium for the town.
The high levels of openness, integration, and participation bring about a high usage rate as well as great attraction.
All around the building sit a multitude of gentle grassy slopes – the whole roof appears an extension of the horizon and openly welcomes people to walk on it.
The design is a positive and bold attempt at the urban public building design paradigm under the requirements of the new era.
Project: The Cloud Town Convention and Exhibition Center (Phase II)
Architects: Approach Design (ZUP)
Client: Cloud Town, Hangzhou
Photographer: Lianping Mao
