West Kowloon Cultural District Theater Village from Water © OMA
The latest buzz from China is all about the West Kowloon Cultural District, a large performing arts venue incorporating studios, theaters, performance venues, and cultural and public spaces. We’ve brought you coverage on OMA’s proposal as well as Foster+Partners‘ and Rocco Design Architects‘ schemes, and as the master plan develops, we’ll be sure to bring you the latest updates. As CNN reported, China has become “an increasingly attractive territory for leading architects.” And, we couldn’t agree more. Over the past few months, we’ve seen great projects from Holl emerging in China, such as his Horizontal Skyscraper in Shenzhen, as well as Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House, OMA’S CCTV Tower, Vector Architects + CCDIP’s Tianjin Elementary School, and, not to mention, Plasma Studio’s Flowing Gardens. Plus, in terms of experimentation, China’s recent Expo 2010 offered the perfect opportunity for architects across the world to demonstrate their newest concepts about space, materials and performance. This explosion of architecture in the West has brought with it a sense of fresh experimentation of form and analysis of programmatic elements and organization. Together, the buildings are forming a rich and diverse vocabulary of architecture sprinkled throughout China. Koolhaas commented to CNN, “I think that any architect today has to be interested in China.”
What do you think of this growing “architectural playground”?
