It is an elegant ribbon made of steel and aluminum that now adorns Lake Tai, in the city of Suzhou (China), west of Shanghai. A work of 500 meters in scope, accessible in places for pedestrians at 40 meters in height, signed by the agency of French architects Christian and Elizabeth de Portzamparc, 2Portzamparc. The designer of the Cité de la Musique (Paris), the Arena stadium of La Défense (Hauts-de-Seine) or the Tour de Lille (North) designed aisles linked in eight by their ribbon to represent “The duality in motion in the form of the alternation of ying and yang”. A cleverly studied object that links several buildings with very different functions.
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This project was started in 2013 on a deserted plain that has become a town in which streets and avenues border a pedestrian axis leading to the lake. The Suzhou Cultural Center was to include a 1,600-seat opera house, a 600-seat auditorium, an exhibition center, a conference center, coffee shops, movie theaters, two museums and shopping areas.
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Three buildings
The program covers 202,000 square meters. To the north, an opera-auditorium and Chinese opera are distributed by a gallery, which provides access to the music conservatory and the 360-degree cinema hall. To the south, two museums dedicated to history as well as to the city coexist, in the form of separate buildings, with a convention center. The imposing ribbon acts as an element linking the two wings.
As part of its work, the agency drew on its previous research, including the unbuilt project submitted on the theme of the Möbius strip for a convention center in Japan in 1992.
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