Xixi Leisure Center is one of the 12 buildings located in an art and culture compound in Xixi National Wetland Park, a cluster architecture commissioned to 12 Chinese architects by Hangzhou city government. Hangzhou has been well known for its long history, rich culture and the West Lake landscape. Xixi art and culture compound is part of development to stimulate cultural tourism.

The leisure center will house leisure function as open and continuous circulation on ground level and sunken into activity pools imitating paths and ponds of wetland topography, while on second level, spedicalized SPA rooms become rather individual spaces, like the thumbnail floating in water lily leaves, carried by leisure circulation underneath.
In such an atmosphere, tender and bulk columns are applied like a bamboo forest supporting the volumes and leaves.

The format and organization of leaves leads an outdoor promenade from the paths up to roof terraces discovering small water lily ponds, eventually unveiling the wetland to a panoramic view from above.

A pause on these leaves might evoke a déjà vu, a fantasy traced back thousands years ago from our ancestors’ believes, that after years and years of intense mental and physical training, we, human beings, are able to pause upon water, light as a fur, alert as a dragonfly, meditating the breeze and aroma in our nature?

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