Concept: Flowing Landscapes, Interactive Boundaries

The Zhejiang Conservatory of Music project is built along a mountain, with the site linearly extending, where the city and nature define the space from different perspectives. Facing this unique site, the design attempts to break away from the traditional besieged layout of university campuses, responding to both the city and nature with two distinct boundary strategies. On the side facing the distant mountains, the design defines the campus boundaries with continuous architectural forms which can also block noises such as the training noise from the military base to the north and the traffic noise from National Highway 320 to the south. Facing the interior of the campus, the design combines the rhythmic facade with curved, flowing architectural forms, echoing the natural mountain contours and landscape architecture along the mountain. The man-made boundaries and the naturally growing boundaries blend and meet here, creating an ecological and dramatic atmosphere befitting a music and arts institution.

At the same time, the design follows the contours of Wangjiang Mountain, integrating the campus theme—the elegance and fluidity of music—into the planning, architecture, and landscape vocabulary. With elegant and formal architectural imagery and a natural landscape-oriented architectural strategy, combined with flowing, expansive dynamic site landscapes and road structures, it collectively creates a unique scene of Zhejiang Conservatory of Music rich in musical artistry and humanistic charm.

Layout: One Axis, Three Gardens

As the campus site extends linearly, we designed a "musical avenue" (derived from staff notation) as the main axis of the campus, stretching from Meiyuan North Road to National Highway 320, connecting functional clusters such as public venues, teaching buildings, the library, dining hall, gymnasium, dormitories, and the southern teaching building complex. In addition, based on the functional distinctions between the northern and southern campuses, a Music Culture Garden is established in the core area of the northern area, while a sunken Life and Sports Garden is built in the central playground of the southern area, serving as the vibrant cores of each area. The transitional mid-section of the campus serves as a leisure zone, featuring a shaded Leisure Garden for faculty and students to unwind after work or study.

Scenes: Three Streets and Ten Courtyards

The music department complex on the north side of the campus is built against the mountain, featuring a free layout and dynamic spaces. The courtyard house and mountain courtyard are nested within each other, creating ever-changing views with every step. The design integrates them with a winding mountain path, forming a poetic scene where one can stroll along the mountain trail and enjoy the melodious sounds of piano.

The Comprehensive Arts Building, Drama Department, and Dance Department are arranged on the terraced platform at the far northern mountain side. The layout is rational yet varied, with individual structures built along the terraces, forming enclosed yet isolated spaces, blending with the scenery of Wangjiang Mountain through the visual corridor reserved by the music school in the south. The Rhythmic Dry Street connects them, recreating the layered courtyard relationship in traditional spaces.

The student dormitories are located on the west side of the southern campus, overlooking the central sunken performance playground. The Vibrant Flower Street between them carries the daily life of music students, full of energy and excitement.

Wangshan Music Courtyard: "Classical Chinese Music Carries Elegance, While the Charm of the Opera Garden Inspires New Trends." The open-air performance venues scattered throughout the campus, combined with the courtyard house and mountain courtyard, forming ten distinct open-air performance spaces and landscape nodes of varying sizes and atmospheres, providing students with rich stages for learning and practice.

Strategy

Bringing the Mountain into the Campus

The music department and library in the north area and the gymnasium and dining hall in the south area are all arranged along the mountain. With a landscape architectural strategy, the design seamlessly integrates the building forms and external landscapes with Wangjiang Mountain and the tea mountains to the northwest, allowing the lush natural mountain scenery to extend into the campus. The excellent students, the melodious sound of pianos, and the green mountains together paint a poetic picture at the foot of Wangjiang Mountain in Zhuantang Town, embodying the distinctive regional characteristics of Zhejiang.

Embedding Music in Form

The overall campus style emphasizes grandeur, elegance, and fluidity. The design is unconventional, with abstract yet vivid facades and formal language, evoking the musical qualities of different instruments through shapes and colors. On the other hand, for the color scheme, the design draws inspiration from the subtle approach of traditional Chinese architectures, that is, designing vibrant colors and intricate patterns in shaded areas. For example, secondary facade elements like balconies and windowsills are embellished with red, orange, yellow and other different vibrant colors, creating a lively and vibrant artistic atmosphere against the backdrop of an elegantly flowing light white color tone.

Open Campus

The music college is not only a teaching hall for musical arts, but also an open music museum accessible to all the public. By enabling the public to enjoy performances in open public venues, view abstract musical architectures, exhibitions and sculptures throughout each departmental gallery, and participate in professional music and performance classes, the design integrates these elements through open dynamic landscapes, forming a fully open, park-style music museum of all forms.

Unity of Sound and Form

From architectural design to interior decoration, professional acoustic design runs throughout the project to align with the campus positioning as a top-tier music college. Among them, the acoustic performance of public venues such as the Grand Theater and the Concert Hall is designed with reference to the acoustic standards of the world's best theater and concert halls. The designed mid-frequency reverberation time for the Concert Hall at full capacity is 2.0 seconds, which can be reduced to 1.75 seconds using variable sound-absorbing structures. The frequency characteristic during the reverberation time is essentially flat, with low-frequency reverberation time appropriately extended and background noise rating less than 25. The mid-frequency reverberation time of the Grand Theater is 1.4 seconds at full capacity, with low-frequency reverberation time appropriately extended and background noise rating less than 30. These parameters are on par with the acoustic design standards of world-class venues such as the Vienna State Opera in Austria, the Opéra Bastille in France, the Boston Symphony Hall in the USA, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Musikverein Golden Hall in Vienna. The design performance and specifications of other acoustic spaces on campus, such as practice rooms, rehearsal classrooms, and vocal classrooms, also rank among the top in the country.

Flowing Landscapes

The architecture complex of the music school, including the natural and smooth campus landscape walkways, the smooth and expansive library, gymnasium, and cafeteria, not only echoes the flowing melodies of music in dynamic forms but also vividly embodies the concept of "The greatest image has no form; The greatest sound is hardly heard." The 300-meter-long Melody Valley Cloud Corridor, constructed using wood-grained plain concrete poured in one single process, meanders through the central campus and connects the northern and southern areas. The non-linear curved surface of the corridor embodies a strong musical and artistic atmosphere. Utilizing the natural elevation differences on both sides, we designed a series of cantilevered half-arches to form a sheltered walkway which forms an important part of the flowing landscape design of the campus.