Beijing based creative team Penda, offer up a dose of fluid, river-inspired landscape design in their winning entry for the 10th International Garden Expo in Wuhan, China.
Dubbed “Where the River Runs”, the proposed landscape pavilion seeks to highlight the importance of clean water and protecting the environment. The design features hills and valleys along a curvaceous, river-like pathway, that visitors meander through to experience the landscape and “bring life to the pavilion”.
Covering an area of 1500 sqm, the pavilion, which is currently under construction, will be completed this year as part of the aforementioned expo which began last year October and ends April this year. The Expo will stretch over 200 acres and have an estimated 12 million people visiting.
Heres a description culled from the penda website,
Our proposal for plot 1590 of the 10th International Garden Expo in Wuhan, China is a natural statement for the importance of clean water and a healthy environment. A river-like pathway guides visitors through an artificial landscape of hills and valleys. Seeds of different plants are given to the visitors at each entrance and they get the opportunity to plant local flowers, vegetables, fruits or herbs along the “riverbed”.
As people are hiking through the landscape and seeding their plants, they take over the function of a river as they bring life to the pavilion. Like the river does in an natural environment, the visitors become the starting point in the life-cycle of plants. They are an essential part to design the pavilion and that will increase the sensibility towards the importance of clean water and clean air. We see the location of plot 1590 as a connection in between other pavilions and it can be entered from 3 sides.
Visitors are naturally guided through the riverbed. On their way they will pass by various landscape formations, like a narrow shore, high cliffs or a natural cave. Throughout the walk, famous local poems and quotes are engraved into the vertical walls. All entrances are leading to the central plaza, where the visitors have time to rest, reflect or have a drink. A natural canopy offers shadow to the plaza.
On their walk through the pavilion, the landscape offers the visitors a wide variety of visual, haptic and scented expression from different terrain-formations to various colorful plants, while they become an essential part in the circle of life.
[via archdaily]
