Undulating Canopy Roof Makes Jiaxing Civic Center a “Garden-Like Living Room for the City”

By Cass Jacoby, RCS Reporter. 

This roof was designed to build coherence and unity of indoor and outdoor spaces while making the three buildings it covers more energy efficient. 

The civic center in the city of Jiaxing, China will be topped with a continuous roof designed by architecture studio MAD. The canopy roof will shelter entrances to the cultural buildings and their glazed exterior walls that will link the ground level with the central lawn. 

"We have created an undulating ring to serve as a garden-like living room for the city: an embrace," MAD founder Ma Yansong told dezeen.  

"A civic center, first and foremost, must be a place that attracts people; a place where children, youth, seniors and families are willing to come together on a daily and weekly basis," says Ma Yansong. 

The Jiaxing Civic Center will contain three buildings, the Science and Technology Museum, the Women and Children Activity Center and the Youth Activity Center organized around a 6,000-square-metre circular lawn designed to be a public park.  

The design of the continuous roof creates coherence and a sense of unity while also making the buildings more energy efficient. 

"The project's floating roof forms a continuous skyline, like a tarp blown by the wind, bringing a soft sense of wrapping to the form," the studio explained to deezen. "The organic flow of the lines throughout the project echoes the softness and grace of the ancient canal towns lining the southern banks of the Yangtze River in eastern China." 

Project credits: 

Architect: MAD 
Principal partners: Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, Yosuke Hayano 
Associate partners: Kin Li, Fu Changrui, Liu Huiying 
Design team: Yin Jianfeng, Alessandro Fisalli, Fu Xiaoyi, Chen-Hsiang Chao, He Yiming, Thoufeeq Ahmed, Chen Hao, He Xiaowen, Zhang Yaohui, Guo Xuan, Edgar Navarrete, Claudia Hertrich, Deng Wei, Zhang Xiaomei, Chen Nianhai, Li Cunhao, Sun Feifei, Punnin Sukkasem, Manchi Yeung, Li Yingzhou 
Client: Jiaxing Highway Investment Co 
Executive architects: East China Architectural Design & Research Institute, Shanghai Municipal Engineering Design Institute (Group) Co 
Facade consultant: RFR Shanghai 
Landscape consultant: Earthasia Design Group, Yong-High Landscape Design Consulting Co 
Interior design consultant: Shanghai Xian Dai Architectural Decoration & Landscape Design Research Institute CO 
Signage consultant: Nippon Design Center 
Lighting consultant: Beijing Sign Lighting Industry Group 
Traffic consultant: Shanghai Municipal Engineering Design Institute (Group) Co 

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