Text description provided by the architects
Zhongyuan Sunac Cultural Tourism City in Zhengzhou is Sunac's eleventh such destination nationwide, planned with eight combined business formats including a snow world, ice park, water world and sports park. The demonstration buildings were designed by the French firm IDEA, fusing Central Plains local culture with Sunac's ice-and-snow theme into a creative exhibition center. The overall form is taken from overlapping and interlocking ice blocks, and the outer pattern of the ice box is inspired by snow crystal. The concept extends the crystal language outward: using the building as the center, ice-crystal connecting structures divide the site into different art spaces, and large mirror pools and interactive installations produce an immersive ice-and-snow landmark. Within the Snow Valley Ice Trace Plaza, Jigao Dream Works designed and built the interactive installations. Following the developer's children's program, Jigao designed three zones: the Crown Ice Castle, a children's water play area and a ground-level leisure play area. The Crown Ice Castle is rendered in pure white, drawing on water-drop forms and glacial castles, with viewing walkways, climbing nets and slides arranged along a circular route; the body widens from bottom to top and contains interactive devices such as talking tubes, periscopes, game panels and small windmills, giving the site unique memories. The Archimedes water play area connects to ground pools and uses water valves, channels, hand pumps, water wheels and Archimedean screws so children learn science and cooperation through play, chasing the cycle of water in a summer paradise. The ground-level leisure play area uses artistically shaped glacial terrain and ice-block imagery for all ages: undulating molded ground simulates glacial texture, and climbing holds, ropes and poles on rubber surfacing become links between nature and human activity. Ice elements run through the whole design, from site layout to products and interactive devices, and the overall palette is pure, simple white, as if leading children into a warm winter fairy tale. The project is intended, within the ice-and-snow fairy tale, to give every child a heart capable of love and of discovering beauty, moved by warmth and tenderness to feel and to adventure.