Beijing, China
Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM), together with CLOU Architects, have completed a new urban park in Beijing for developers China Vanke: a zen environment, with tree canopies offering shade, a field of mealy cup sage, and even a 7.6-ton granite Fengshui ball gliding on a thin film of water.
Planned carefully by the local government as a central park, the 800m-long Daxing New Town Green Hub and Park utilizes a design language of circles to settle the plan elements.
A hardscape zone of black and white granite cobbles connects the mass of the architecture with a circular corner plaza of equal visual weight.
Twenty-seven large granite boulders paired with Sabina Chinensis define the edge of the circular plaza. The boulders also mask a temporary parking requirement by acting as curbstones.
Visually the composition of concentric radiations of the hardscape zone forges a strong connection with the compositions of the Zen rock gardens.
At the same time, they create powerful centers and gathering spaces. The center of the parking plaza again reinforces the Zen tradition: an asymmetrical composition featuring a sculptural Pinus tabulaeformis, regular stripes of Buxus, and two large low boulders.
Elsewhere, moving towards the architecture one encounters a 7.6-ton Fengshui Ball.
The granite waterfall glides silently on a thin film of water, a supersized reinterpretation of a kitsch Chinese garden element.
Visually the composition of concentric radiations of the hardscape zone forges a strong connection with the compositions of the Zen rock gardens.
They also create powerful centers and gathering spaces.
The center of the parking plaza again reinforces the Zen tradition: an asymmetrical composition featuring a sculptural Pinus tabulaeformis, regular stripes of Buxus, and two large low boulders.
Elsewhere, moving towards the architecture one encounters a 7.6 ton Fengshui Ball. The granite waterfall glides silently on a thin film of water, a supersized reinterpretation of a kitsch Chinese garden element.
The softscape portion of the project interprets the circular plan elements as landforms.
A slender side path to the architecture splits a great mounded landform with astonishing visual force.
The exposed sides of the sliced mounds are detailed in an arching brick pattern, suggesting the mounds ruptured from the earth prior to the slice.
A lurid field of Salvia farinacea unifies the sliced halves of the mound into a whole. Beneath the cantilever of the architecture, the landscape defers, inverting the mound with a multi-trunk Quercus mongolica at the center.
A scattering of 19 white marble cubes populates the underside of the architecture, luring visitors to the seating within the softscape zone.
One enters the park through the Double Fortune Plaza, the main entrance path bisecting two perfectly symmetrical 20m circular plazas.
The focal points of each plaza echo their mirror image quality: two Salix matsudana cloned from the same “mother” occupy the centers.
A slow staircase (700mm treads with 70mm risers) descends 4.7m into the space of the park, sheltered by an allee of Platanus.
After a gentle curve, the staircase presents a view of a sunken plaza beyond the dazzling trecandis of the Sun Moon Bench.
Handcrafted in BAM’s studio and installed on-site by BAM’s designers, the Sun Moon bench features a cloud-shrouded moon in starlight from the plaza side.
From the staircase side, the Sun radiates in concentric rings creating wind which in turn engenders the traditional Chinese cloud patterning.
The sunken plaza itself acts as another focal point for park activities in high-contrast black and white cobble paving. A black-hole-like vortex in cast iron occupies its focal center point and ejects a modest water fountain in the summer months.
A fancy paving grid of light granite with white carved marble insets borders the sunken plaza.
Each of the carved marble insets represents one of four elements: time, space, fertility, or chaos.
The visual agitation of the high contrast sunken plaza draws the viewer’s eyes up to the calmer scenes of the park slopes beyond.
A backdrop of white slab marble amphitheater seats punctuated by mature Saphora japonica embraces the plaza.
The marble benches create an inviting place to nap in the shade or watch activities unfold on the plaza below.
The amphitheater abuts the Star Maze, a pentagonal star shape extending the metaphor of the heavens.
Crushed granite mazed paths snake between soft walls of 2m tall Platycladus orientalis radiating outward from a central Acer truncatum.
Project: Daxing Green Hub and Park
Architects: Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM)
Associate Architects: CLOU Architects
Client: China Vanke Co., Ltd.
Photographers: Nathaniel McMahon, Shu He, and Amey Kandalgaonkar
