The Forest Tissue Garden, a 3rd prize winner for the 10th International Garden Expo in Hubei, China

"The Forest Tissue Garden—unveiling the process" by Paris-Rome team KH Studio + Atelier EEM won a third-prize award in a competition for the 10th International Garden Expo in Hubei, China. Taking place in September 2015-April 2016, the expo is China's largest landscape event, with 30 million visitors expected to attend.

Hosted by the Chinese government, the competition garnered proposals from over 900 candidates from 30 countries and regions. The results can hint at the scale of this expo: three 1st-prize winners; six 2nd-prize winners; 11 3rd-prize winners, and 50 honorable mentions. Works of the 1st and 2nd-prize winners will be constructed at the expo.

Earlier this year, KH Studio had another big win in the Europan 12 overall Europe competition for the Mannheim, Germany site.

Project description:

"The FOREST TISSUE garden’s symbology is not cultural or theoretical but rather a perceptive one. It speaks the universal language of visual and tactile sensorial experience.  In the FOREST TISSUE Garden the environmental richness of the park is not fed to the visitor’s eye immediately, but is rather the result of a discovery path.

The garden will be seen from distant points of the expos’ limits as a stimulant enigma, a soft dream cloud or a mountain, hiding a tropical heart. Reaching and progressively unveiling the mystery it hides will be the key distinctive element of attraction of this Garden."

"From the distance a cloud of veils will attract the visitors attention: - nuanced under daylight and brilliant and colorful at night, it will appear hiding something interesting. Just like our cities hide their natural and geographical roots from our every day’s comprehension.

Reaching the garden a rather mineral atmosphere will introduce the visitor to a series of parallel paths, separated by white veils that show and hide vegetation in a perceptive stimulating game."

"Three different stair platforms will allow to reach the trees height and get to overcome veils with their sight as well as getting in a closer and intimate relation with plants. From outside, visitors heads will emerge from the mist of veils as if stepping out of a cloud."

"The visitors path is free and individual but it follows the logic of Landscape Process, allowing the visitor to move from a dominant artificial atmosphere made of parallel trans-lucid veils, towards a locus of a major natural event and physical freedom in the tropical heart of the garden.

Landscape in itself is the result of a process, a living system in which every ecosystemic layer is thought as a progressive and nurturing contribution to an overall environment."

Project credits:

KH_STUDIO + ATELIER EEM 
Design Team : Alessandro delli Ponti, Francesca Liggieri, Marc Blume, Verdiana Spicciarelli, Clelia Bartolomei, Elisa Paungger 
Consultants : Wen Qian Zhu, Davide Curatola Soprana

All images courtesy of KH Studio and Atelier EEM.