The area around the Memorial Hall for Compatriots Murdered in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre is to be redesigned to make it more fitting.

The project, which covers 122 hectares of land in the Jiangdongmen District in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, aims to ensure the surrounding area is more suitable for the hall.

Zhang Weizhen, a senior engineer with Nanjing Municipal Urban Planning Bureau, said: "The area was a former suburb and has aged residential houses, small shops and vendors. The environment there is really noisy and not so solemn.

"We are looking for bids for the replanning project. The public bidding period lasts until March 5."

Only those first-class spatial planning and design institutions from both home and abroad that have experience in such urban design projects will have the right to bid.

"The criteria set for those competitive tenders are really high, because the city wants to have a high-standard project which will give prominence to the gravity and the educational function of that district," Zhang explained.

The initiative will define which kind of architecture is suitable to be built in the area, its colours, its height and other elements in order to keep in line with the overall grave atmosphere of the area.

Planning will be very detailed, including the shape of the street lamps and the road bricks, according to Zhang.

All the new bids will be judged by a team consisting of four experts from architecture and planning areas, said Zhu Chengshan, curator of the hall.

The selected bid will be shown to the public to collect more suggestions for modifications.

The whole planning project will be finished by the end of this year and the re-structuring work could begin in 2007, according to Zhang.

He said the re-building of the memorial hall, which began last December, has prompted the need to improve the surrounding area.

"A new memorial hall is not enough. We want all the buildings in that area to contribute to the same theme of mourning," according to Zhang.

With a total investment of 493 million yuan (US$62 million), the new memorial hall will cover an area of 5.5 hectares and be completed by the end of 2007.

The hall has been a major educational base in the country and receives about 1.2 million visitors every year, including 100,000 foreign visitors, according to statistics collected by the hall.

Luo Shouyi, a resident in Jiangdongmen District, has welcomed the replanning project.

"It always makes me sad to see that the memorial hall is surrounded by a noisy environment and shabby buildings. I hope the new planning will bring a sense of gravity to all visitors who set foot into the area," said Luo.

(China Daily February 27, 2006)