A megastructure set in a megalopolis, Tianjin Juilliard aims to be both big and agile. It’s a campus in a building, a descendent of the energetic, multipurpose contraptions dreamed up by Cedric Price and Archigram six decades ago in Swinging London. “Our practice has always been influenced by the great thinkers of the ‘60s and ‘70s,” says Charles Renfro, the DS+R partner in charge of the Tianjin project. “We certainly thought about Price’s Fun Palace and how you can create a place where lots of different things can happen, both programmed and unprogrammed.” But while many of the super-sized structures from that era turned their backs on their surroundings, Tianjin Juilliard tries to establish a close relationship between building and context.
The 350,000-square-foot complex sits in a riverside park in the rapidly growing Yujiapu Financial District of Tianjin, a port city 85 miles southeast of Beijing that has been the focus of intense development over the past 20 years. High-speed trains now connect the capital’s 21 million residents to Tianjin’s 15 million people in just 45 minutes, creating a vast sprawl of urbanization.
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