Hunan Provincial Communications Planning, Survey & Design Institute Co, Ltd.: Winner of World Design Awards 2023. As the only place where people can stay on a closed highway, the service area integrates publicity, inclusiveness and property of participation. This practice aims to realize the transformation from basic space to compound space by sorting out the needs and interaction relationship between people, environment, place and culture. Miluo Service area is located in the highway section from Pingjiang to Yiyang, Hunan Province. Miluo is the hometown of dragon boat and ‘Qu Yuan’, and the service center is the first transportation, cultural and tourism service center built with the theme of intangible cultural heritage. The total land area of the project is 13.6282 hectares, and the construction area of the complex building in the north area covers a floor area of 4,797 square meters, including the parking lot, gas station, catering, entertainment, recreation, tourism and other commercial functions.

According to the design, the building volumes undergo dispersed, staggered and clustered treatment, and the form of group is adopted to weaken the large structural characteristics of the public building. The dissolved and scattered linear volumes are closer to the scale of the surrounding dwellings, and the multi-perspective landscape path is created through the change of scale and vision. The connected layout of the roof allows the two-dimensional path to be transformed into a three-dimensional path full of fun, from outside to inside and to outside, a multi-level walking experience is created. The roof is arranged with steps and ramp, people can sit, step, slide and climb, thus allowing more fun to be explored. The slope surface eliminates the spatial constraint of vertical direction to horizontal direction, and constructs the landscape community of far (water surface) and near (service area). Meanwhile, the mimicry space of dragon boat is used to guide and strengthen people’s perception of intangible cultural heritage to form historical continuity.

The irregular columns of the facade respond to the scattered reeds along the river, and the structural support, decorative components and curtain wall system are integrated as an organic whole. Within the reasonable cost range, wood grain aluminum plate with delicate texture is selected as the facade finishing material, the surface is coated with fluorocarbon roller coating, which has strong weather resistance performance and exquisite natural concave and convex texture effect to meet the demand of field conditions and aesthetic needs.

The undulating space echoes to changes in wind, light and heat to achieve a passive green strategy. The superimposed combination and staggered arrangement of the form make the roof and wall separate from each other, the sloping roof inside the building gives a hot pressing and draft effect, and carries out heat exchange in the gap space created by the staggered blocks, thus improving the indoor environment quality and enhancing the users’ sense of comfort.

With the advantage of landscape location near the water, this project can provide tourists with a full range of comprehensive services. The design deliberately downplays the architectural presence and emphasizes the creation of landscape, and this strategy aims to balance the relationship between resources and environment, so that road users can get a place to rest, and residents in Miluo city can get a suburban place for recreation. In this way, the contradiction and conflict between highway and human settlement can be well resolved. At the same time, based on the uncertainty of future development, the architects reserve a flexible space between the water and the land, which allows human behavior to guide the growth and evolution of the site infinitely.

Project Details
Firm
Hunan Provincial Communications Planning, Survey & Design Institute Co, Ltd.

Architect
Xu Qin, Shi Donghao

Project Name
Miluo Highway Service Center

World Design Awards Category
Transportation Built

Project Location
Miluo City

Team
Zhu Wushuang, Fu Huicheng, Hao Zijuan, Chen Shan, Li Aimin, Jiang Feifei

Country
China

Photography ©Credit
©Li Yi

Hunan Provincial Communications Planning, Survey & Design Institute Co., Ltd., founded in 1960, is a national class-A comprehensive large-scale survey and design enterprise with foreign economic cooperation management qualification, and a high-tech enterprise in Hunan Province, China.

The firm has a strong market influence in bridge, tunnel, water transportation and other professional fields. Its practise throughout the country’s provinces, involved in a number of countries. Its market share and various production and management indicators rank among the top of provincial institutes in the same industry in China, and it ranks among the top 100 national engineering survey and design enterprises and the top 100 enterprises with comprehensive strength of China construction system.