Taiyuan Botanical Garden / Delugan Meissl Associated Architects

The project was launched with the ambitious objective of transforming a former coal-mining area into a landscape park, which is not only a model for the landscape design that is so essential in China, but also contains a building infrastructure that can be used for researching into and offering people access to and information about natural ecosystems. The politically stated need to create high-quality leisure areas in or close to cities and to find ways of controlling the resulting large numbers of visitors formed the basis for the definition of a spatial programme. This envisaged not only the creation of the landscape park itself but also the construction of a central entrance building with a nature museum and administration facility, three greenhouses, a restaurant, a bonsai museum and a related research centre with a library and staff accommodation.