Qiantang Bay Cultural District

The Qiantang Bay Cultural District transforms a former industrial stretch of Hangzhou's Zhedong Canal in Xiaoshan into a green cultural corridor of terraces, gardens and performance spaces. Zaha Hadid Architects frames the district around a suite of civic buildings — a library organised by inhabitable structural columns and clad in jade-toned masonry tiles that echo the region's five-thousand-year stone-craft heritage; an International Youth Centre of carved, interconnected auditoriums and studios; and a museum, gallery, music hall and fitness centre set among plazas and parkland. Integral to Hangzhou's sponge-city strategy, the central water axis threads permeable surfaces, planted swales and water-retention landscape through the site, knitting the canal basin back into the heart of the city as both a public realm and a flood-resilient ecological spine.