Anji Culture and Art Center

The Anji Culture and Art Center is a MAD Architects-designed civic landmark in Anji County, Zhejiang Province, the bamboo-and-white-tea town of southeast China near Shanghai. Spanning roughly 120,000 square meters of built space on a sprawling green site, the center unifies six venues, a grand theater, a conference center, a leisure center, a sports center, a youth activity center, and an art education center, beneath a canopy of overlapping white metal roofs scattered like giant bamboo leaves and interlaced with grassed surfaces evoking terraced tea plantations. Openings between the leaf-like roofs draw daylight into the interiors, while a main facade rising as high as seventeen meters is set to become the tallest self-supporting glass wall in China. Sustainable systems including permeable paving, roof greening, and rainwater harvesting tie the building to Anji's celebrated ecological identity.