Yiwu is famous for small commodities. Small and medium-sized enterprises are densely concentrated in this place where the private economy is highly developed. In terms of urban construction, this means that the city is filled with a large number of homogenized and small-scale buildings featuring high density.

Local citizens have a desire for iconic city architecture and open places for public activities. After being included in the central city planning of Zhejiang province, Yiwu has begun to take firm steps toward becoming an international metropolis and hoped to take constructing Yiwu Cultural Center as an opportunity to declare to the public its cultural confidence featuring openness to the international society and the future.
Photography: Qiang Zhao Yiwu Cultural Square is a large-scale cultural complex combining various functions of culture and entertainment, education, and training, sports and fitness, etc. Its design, which is minimalist with huge building volume, differs from that of ordinary buildings in the city. Its center is not a grand indoor hall, but a three-dimensional courtyard where a sunken square is linked with a roof garden through ramps and big steps.

Space is organized with circulation and transforms step by step, and the landscape presented to people can be different as they walk around this place. Such a design technique learns from the spatial organization of traditional Chinese garden and builds on it.
Photography: Qiang Zhao
At the main e...