Location: Luohu District, Shenzhen    Time: 2000-2005    Size: 5000 sqm 

The site is located in one of the most densely populated areas of downtown Shenzhen. The program includes an outdoor display area for public art, galleries, a bookshop, a cafe, an artist studio & a semi-underground parking garage.

The design also calls for a close connection of spaces for public art making and display, as well as an art forum and informal meeting places. Also it asks for the integration of the public plaza and the interior exhibition space.

The massing contains an elongated gallery along the north border of the site, a sloped car park in the east, a series of walls and shallow ponds defining the west edge of the plaza, and a glassy box gallery at the southwest corner. Reinforced concrete is used throughout to form continuous, floating and folding planes enclosing both the indoor galleries and outdoor display area, framing views of the fragments of the surrounding city.

The building sculpts deeply into the ground and also stretches horizontally to the outmost corners of the site. The flat surface of the site is sculpted, remolded, folded, fractured, and warped to create new urban geography. Therefore the whole plaza is divided into different geographic zones, like hillside stream, dry land and green slopes in response to site geometry and the need to host specific events. The design attempts to blend the boundary of building and plaza, indoor and outdoor, roof and ground surface.

The PA-P will be an open public forum for artists and art spectators and also a place for average citizens. It provides an interface to maximize the interaction among art, artists and the general public. The artificial landscape helps to define different zones for specific events and at the same time retain maximum flexibility. It also encourages artists to design site specific sculptures and installations according to the various surface geometries and geographies.