Anji Culture and Art Center

MAD's Anji Culture and Art Center unifies six civic venues beneath a canopy of overlapping metal roofs that scatter across the site like giant bamboo leaves, a nod to Anji's identity as a bamboo-and-white-tea region. Under the ridged, leaf-like canopies sit a Grand Theater, a Conference Center, a Leisure Center, a Sports Center, a Youth Activity Center, and an Art Education Center, their interiors flowing in undulating, landscape-like volumes. The main façade rises as much as seventeen metres in a single sweep of glazing — promoted as one of the tallest self-supporting glass walls in China — dissolving the barrier between the interior halls and the surrounding scenery. Green roofs, permeable paving, and rainwater harvesting knit the complex into its rural setting, framing the building as an inhabited piece of landscape.