Shenzhen Cultural Center

The existing Shenzhen Cultural Center was built back in 1980. Its facilities have seriously aged in the 40-year period since construction and do not meet today’s requirements for public cultural services. To meet the citizens’ increasingly diverse needs for cultural services, the municipal government plans to build a new cultural center to both improve the level of the city’s public cultural services and enhance the quality of those services.

The Shenzhen New Cultural Center will become an innovative civic culture and arts training base, a civic experience and exhibition center, a multi-category cultural and arts exchange camp, and an inter-city cultural exchange and gathering spot in the Guangdong – Hong Kong – Macao Greater Bay Area, a digital network platform for the city’s cultural museum alliance, as well as a mass cultural and core art and creativity park.

Our competition proposal aims to create a kind of a cultural valley to strengthen the feeling of immersion for the users of the building in the fast-growing city of Shenzhen. The roof structure resembling stage curtains encloses a variety of public activities divided into box-like volumes. This results to there being an “ocean of culture” under the roof – the different cultural facilities are practically arranged on the two sides of the main flow so that the visitors can dive into the “ocean”. The diverse functions of the building have been laid out in such a manner that the cultural center works like a miniature city where the users can easily find their their way to the diverse destinations or gather on the “city’s” cultural square. Based on the site conditions, the outdoor plaza and the theater, combined with the riverside landscape, create a friendly atmosphere for the citizens while also providing more possibilities for public participation.