Ningbo Deji Lane Historical and Cultural District
China
View Project
Opera House
- Location
- Tashkent, Uzbekistan
- Client
- Confidential
- Services
- Masterplanning, Architecture
- Sector
- Culture + Civic
- Size
- Site: 30,000m², GFA: 15,000m²
Refurbishing a National Heritage building and the city quarter around it.
The Istiklol Palace is one of the most significant buildings in Tashkent, a National Heritage concert hall completed in 1981 as the Palace of People’s Friendship and renamed Istiklol (‘Independence’ in Uzbek) in 2008. The Benoy-led proposal develops a refurbishment of the Palace alongside a wider masterplan for the new cultural district around it.
The intervention leaves the Palace’s historic exterior intact and adds a light, openwork roof structure that gives the building a new presence on the skyline. At the urban scale, the masterplan establishes a green visual axis from the Tashkent Circus to Alisher Navoi National Park, holding the Istiklol Palace at the centre of the composition. Sight-lines, public realm and circulation work in concert so that the building reads from multiple key locations across the new quarter.
A cultural district activated through the day
The masterplan composes green public realm, cultural programme and supporting uses to keep the quarter active across morning, evening and night-time hours. Uzbekistan’s craft and decorative heritage are referenced in material and pattern, grounding the new public realm in the visual language of the country and giving the district a clear cultural identity.
