Huzhou is situated in northern Zhejiang Province, bordered by Jiaxing to the east, Hangzhou to the south, Tianmu Mountain to the west, and Taihu Lake to the north. Across the lake lie the cities of Wuxi and Suzhou. As the only city around Taihu Lake named after it, Huzhou lies on the lake’s southern shore, where East Tiao Stream meets West Tiao Stream. The area comprises two districts—Wuxing and Nanxun—and is under the jurisdiction of Changxing, Anji, and Deqing counties.
The Cultural and Sports Center of Wuxing District is located within a grassy area south of the district government, east of Jingsi Road, west of Jingwu Road, and north of Wei’er Road. This site is a key component of the Eastern New City development, planned as a cultural and sports complex that includes cultural centers, libraries, sports halls, and other facilities. The plot is bordered by Yangqian Port to the east, Wei’er East Road to the south, and natural grass ripples to the west and north.
This project aligns with Huzhou City’s strategy to build an ecological lakeside city. It supports Wuxing District’s goal of urban agglomeration in the eastern region, aiming to create an attractive new city in the east while enhancing lakeside urban development and improving regional functional layouts. The Cultural and Sports Center complies with the requirements set by the Cultural and Sports Bureau, Education Bureau, and other authorities to host certain Provincial Games events.
The design fully integrates citizen participation elements, maximizing venue utilization during daily life. It envisions the Center as a comprehensive public service area that combines urban residential, sports, commercial leisure, entertainment, and exhibition functions, thereby creating a landmark in the eastern new city.
Image Concept
Huzhou is an ancient city in Jiangnan with a history exceeding 2,300 years, founded during the Warring States period. It is renowned for its beautiful natural landscapes and abundant historical and cultural landmarks. Historically, Huzhou has been known as the home of silk, the land of fish and rice, a cultural hub, and the “Pearl of South Taihu Lake.”
Throughout history, Huzhou has been a prosperous cultural center in southeast China, nurturing many talented scholars and artists. Famous calligraphers such as Wang Xizhi, Wang Xianzhi, Yan Zhenqing, Mi Fu, Su Shi, and Wang Shipeng have either served as officials or lived here.
Additionally, local calligraphers and painters like Cao Buxing, Zhang Sengyao, Bei Yiyuan, Zhu Shen, Shi Gaoxian, Xu Biaoren, and Yan Wengui contributed to the rich cultural heritage. Shi Zhi, the seventh-generation descendant of Wang Xizhi, famously lived in Yongxin Temple by the lake for over 30 years, collecting discarded brushes and burying them in the “Returning Pen Tomb.” This history has led to the saying that “half of the history of calligraphy and painting is in Huzhou.”
Chinese calligraphy and painting flow from the tip of the brush, and since the Song and Yuan dynasties, when the Hu brush replaced the Xuan brush as the representative Chinese brush, Huzhou has been deeply connected to this art form. The Southern Dynasty painter Sheikh, in his “Record of Ancient Paintings,” proposed the “Six Methods” of painting, the first being “Qi Yun.” “Qi” refers to the endless vitality of nature, while “Yun” denotes the inherent character or charm of an object. Together, they express the “spirit” or “aura” of an artwork.
Drawing inspiration from this concept of “aura” and brushstrokes, and using contemporary architectural techniques as a medium, the design aims to reinterpret traditional cultural charm without being overly literal.
Literary Meaning
Like holding a pen to paint, culture and sports have always been closely linked. The design’s lines are powerful yet elegant, rich in form and unified in rhythm. Calligraphy combines strength and beauty, much like dance, which is an ideal cultural and sports activity blending physicality with artistry.
The designer intends this to reflect Huzhou’s traditional urban spirit—balancing physical fitness with cultural refinement—and to evoke the rhythm of life and the city’s vibrant energy.
City Image
Located at the intersection of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces, Huzhou historically belongs to the “Western Wu” region within the “Three Wu.” The local culture is dominated by “Wu culture” typical of the Taihu Lake basin. Traditional architecture here is heavily influenced by Wu culture, characterized by white walls, black tiles, and landscapes featuring overlapping mountains and rivers.
The design seeks to respectfully interpret and express this traditional culture, encouraging people to experience tradition, ecology, and landscape in a fresh way. Like the aesthetic principle in Chinese landscape painting—“mountains are not mountains, and water is not water”—contemporary architecture should reconnect with tradition by truly “seeing mountains as mountains.”
Traditional Chinese architecture originates from humanity’s respect and interdependence with nature, where architectural style serves merely as a momentary expression of this relationship.
In modern China, urban development often suffers from severe homogenization, leaning towards mechanization, industrialization, and commercialization. This is largely due to a lack of deep cultural attachment to place. With thousands of years of agricultural history, China’s emotional bond to the land permeates its national culture. Traditional Chinese architecture reflects the intimate relationship and emotions between humans and nature.
Thus, the essence of architectural culture lies in natural landscapes and human emotions, rather than mere architectural form.
The designers have captured Huzhou’s urban atmosphere and spirit, translating these qualities into architectural language. Through modern construction techniques, the design expresses optimism for the future while paying homage to tradition, linking Huzhou’s past, present, and future across time and space.
Floor Plan
Venue Distribution: Based on land use considerations, the western side is designated for sports venues and outdoor training spaces to consolidate sports functions, guide pedestrian flow, and reduce functional overlaps. The eastern side houses the cultural center, library, and a supporting hotel.
The central area runs north to south, featuring a civic cultural square with sunken commercial streets and elevated walkways. This space connects the landscape park to the south and the lakeside square to the north, creating a coherent and layered sequence of landscape and activity zones that align with the Wuxing District government’s planning axis to the north.
This layout plans for a sports venue area in the west, a cultural venue area in the east, and a central axis dedicated to civic activities and commercial dining.
Spatial Form: The design employs varied visual scales to harmonize with the surrounding urban environment. Along the north-south axis, the building’s skyline forms a saddle shape, rising on the east and west sides and descending in the middle, echoing the urban axis.
To the west lies a low-density community and natural landscape; the building’s northwest corner connects to the existing landscape through a continuous arc. On the east side, the building’s volume adjusts to the smaller-scale residential area, visually balancing with surrounding structures.
Civic Square: The design aims beyond basic sports and cultural functions, infusing urban life into the space to ensure lasting vitality during and after events. The design also considers potential future organic updates to the various functional modules.
Three square nodes along the north-south axis each have distinct themes and are interconnected:
- The south square serves as the main entrance for the sports hall and cultural center and functions as a landscape park for nearby residential areas. During events, it accommodates large crowds; afterward, it becomes a leisure space for residents to connect with nature.
- The north square features a waterfront viewing platform, lakeside dining, and leisure facilities. A water screen movie projection on the lake adds entertainment value post-events, supporting the venue’s ongoing vitality.
- The central cultural square is staggered in height, allowing visitors to move through varied spaces and experiences. It includes an outdoor BIM exhibition area that brings art closer to the public and attracts foot traffic to the sunken commercial street.
The cultural square’s multifunctional design maximizes citizen engagement, extends operating hours, enhances public welfare, and optimizes operational benefits.
Pedestrian and Vehicle Separation: The project adopts complete separation of pedestrian and vehicle circulation to avoid interference. Semi-underground parking is implemented, with a 2-meter excavation and a first-floor platform raised 2 meters. Vehicles enter via two entrances on Grassy Road, descending to the semi-underground level, while pedestrians ascend to the elevated platform. The sunken commercial street and underground garage are on the same elevation but are physically separated.
Fire Protection Flow: An invisible fire protection loop doubles as a pedestrian route, ensuring firefighting accessibility. Each venue is surrounded by sufficient space for ring roads and firefighting zones, with independent fire lanes and areas for each building.
Landscape Design
The internal landscape blends harmoniously with the architecture, combining curves and straight lines, and alternating between artificial and natural elements. Tall trees are planted on lower platforms to mitigate height differences, while low shrubs on upper platforms reduce obstruction of the main buildings. Open areas feature scattered trees to enrich the landscape, and reeds are planted in water-adjacent zones to soften shorelines and enhance wildness.
Hardscape materials include stone slabs, floor tiles, gravel, and treated wood. Landscape ornaments reflect a blend of traditional and modern Chinese styles, consistent with the overall design style.
The external slow-moving pedestrian system integrates with the overall landscape of water bodies like Grass Ripple and Xishan Yang. It follows Grass Ripple Road, Xishan Road, Wuxing Avenue, and Qufu Road, linking public spaces such as the landscape park south of the Wuxing District Government.
Functional Layout
The Wuxing District Cultural and Sports Center primarily includes a sports hall, cultural center, and library.
Gymnasium: Covering approximately 15,000 square meters, the sports center features a 2,500-seat standard arena with media support, equipment, logistics rooms, and training grounds. It also includes small training venues, gyms, catering, and commercial facilities to support post-event operations.
Cultural Center: Spanning around 12,000 square meters, it houses an 800-seat theater and a multifunctional exhibition hall. The exhibition space accommodates planning and cultural exhibitions, multifunctional halls, cultural publishing, and community activities.
Library and Hotel: The Huzhou Children’s Library and Wuxing District Library are combined into a single facility covering about 11,000 square meters. Auxiliary spaces include a 250-person multifunctional hall, visually impaired and senior reading rooms, special collections, and training/seminar rooms. The hotel features banquet, training, and guest room functions.
Supporting Commercial Facilities: Commercial, entertainment, and leisure facilities are thoughtfully distributed around the cultural and sports center to meet comprehensive needs such as training, accommodation, and shopping.
Facade Design
The design employs numerous nonlinear geometric forms, with complex curved surfaces in spatial, vertical, and planar dimensions. This complexity increases challenges in detailed design and construction.
Key concerns include optimizing hyperbolic panels, standardizing construction elements and nodes, improving panel reuse, and precise positioning during assembly.
During implementation, the design coordinated among facade, structural, and MEP disciplines. Using algorithmic design tools (RHINO+GRASSSHOPPER), the geometry of the building surfaces was studied to optimize and locate facade panel dimensions.
Leveraging BIM technology, construction data was extracted from digital models, enabling comprehensive conflict resolution across disciplines.
Architectural Form Rationalization: The original design featured many free-form curves, complicating modular panel production and installation.
To mitigate this, early design refinement transformed Nurbs curves into combinations of geometric arcs with identifiable centers and equal divisions, preserving the design intent.
Additionally, construction cost optimization led to shape adjustments, replacing some hyperbolic surfaces with singly curved or flat surfaces, positively impacting cost control and window placement.
Curtain Wall Panel Subdivision: Due to physical constraints of exterior curtain wall panels, the design accounts for warpage tolerance, size limits, and quantity control of irregular metal panels to organize the overall panel system.
To manage design and construction schedules, the graphic functional design was continuously refined alongside adjustments in building contours, panel division, and MEP systems, forming a dynamic and complex design process.
Two key methodologies—BIM and algorithmic architecture—were employed, with tools like REVIT and GRASSHOPPER facilitating comprehensive problem-solving.
Drawings
Sketch
Floor Plan
Floor Plan
Sectional View
Sectional View
Elevation Drawing
Detail Drawing
Detail Drawing
General Layout
Floor Plan
Library Layout Plan
Library Layout Plan
Library Layout Plan
Library Layout Plan
Sports Center Floor Plan Layout
Sports Center Floor Plan Layout
Sports Center Floor Plan Layout
Sports Center Floor Plan Layout
Layout Plan of Cultural Center/Exhibition Hall
Layout Plan of Cultural Center/Exhibition Hall
Layout Plan of Cultural Center/Exhibition Hall
Layout Plan of Cultural Center/Exhibition Hall
Layout Plan of Cultural Center/Exhibition Hall
Hotel Floor Plan Layout
Underground Plan Layout
Decomposed Axonometric Diagram
Facade Design
Structural Analysis
Structural Analysis
Structural Analysis
Energy-Saving Design
Thermal Analysis
Diagram Illustration
Project Information
Architect: Lin Ke (Shanghai) Architectural Design
Address: Wuxing Avenue, Wuxing District, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China
Category: Sports Architecture
Lead Architects: Shang Hong, Yin Zhen, Zhu Chen
Architectural Design Team: Wang Tiantian, Ji Jun, Bai Yuying, Xue Xiaofang, Du Haokun, Wu Wenbo, Qu Heng, Cui Haifeng, Yuan Xueyong, An Cuihong, Tao Xiaolin, Zhang Liujuan
Total Land Area: 93,763.1 square meters
Building Area: 131,726.14 square meters
Project Year: 2018
Photographer: Arch Exest
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