In the Chinese city Xi´an, former capital and international tourist destination that includes the tomb of the Terracotta Warriors, Croatian architectural studio 3LHD won the 1st prize at the international architectural competition The New Silk Road Cultural Park! The city of Xi´an, Chinese capital during the rule of 13 dynasties, wants to become the cultural center of China and in 2006 opened an architectural competition for a theme park. This competition is part of a larger project called The New Silk Road Park whose goal is to explore influence of global communication on intertwining cultures, because Xi´an was a former starting point of the ancient Silk Road and one of the places where Europe and Asia have been in close touch and where they communicated to each other. The architectural task at the location of the new park with a lake was to come up with and build 9 different areas with 9 accompanying houses - cultural and historical zones - that would represent 9 regions influenced by the Silk Road, from Europe (Western, Eastern, Mediterranean and Scandinavia), across Asia Minor (Turkish and Hebrew zone), to Persia and finally China. Architects from the studio 3LHD won the 1st prize for the region of Eastern Europe. Therefore, Croatian architects found themselves in the midst of eminent architects such as Massimiliano Fuksas, Snohetta Architects, Nox, Atelier Big City, and Antoine Predock.
More about the project here.
