TLS Landscape Architecture in team with AZPML Architecture LTD have won an international competition for a new ‘green axis’ within Shenzhen’s new Super Headquarters Base district, China.

The winning landscape design entry is inspired by an open model of university campus, the project is a sprawling terrain of various biomes and sunken courtyards for the chinese city.
Submitted by Berkeley/Shanghai-based TLS Landscape Architecture in collaboration with the London and New York offices of AZPML Architecture LTD, the proposed "Super Campus" was inspired by the open model of a college campus and aims to link "business and research communities not only with each other but also with Shenzhen's urban fabric and its ecological systems."

The Shenzhen Design Center organized the competition.
 

Project description by TLS Landscape - AZPML

'Aggressively biological,' the park is a living organism composed of 4 specific biomes which climb a topography of hills and invade hollows in the below grade layers to create a three-dimensional 'campus mesh.

The 4 campus biomes include a botanical forest and pool, an exuberantly vegetated transportation node, a grassland dedicated to cultural performance, and coastal zone with bay-related wetlands and avian habitat.

A group of 5 transparent 'Crystal Hills' create a moment of intensity within the overall mesh to house the bamboo forest and fill a regional train station with light.

A series of sunken courtyards that bring the vegetation into the underground spaces are covered by lofty and delicate shading canopies of mesh crowned by large outdoor fans and chilled rain fountains for cooling in the warm Shenzhen summers.

At the Shenzhen Bay overlook, large retractable fabric canopies span over a festival esplanade and a public green framed by terraced hills. Opening these canopies will be a dramatic performance in itself.

Each space in the Super Campus is dedicated to cooperation and exchange in an open, non-hierarchical environment where social intersections and chance meetings fertilize the collaborative engagement between the Super Headquarters Base companies. And these spaces are framed and suffused with direct physical relationships to local ecologies – a business requirement as climate change comes to structure our enterprises.

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Architects
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Project team
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AZPML Architecture.- Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Ivaylo Nachev, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Carlota Mendez.
TLS Landscape.- Tom Leader, Si Zheng, Xin Zhong, Pablo Alfaro, Fan Wei, Ying Wei, Shuping Ye, Wanpeng Zu, Zhaowei Yu.
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Collaborators
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Climate Consultant.- Klimaat - Meiring Beyers.
Public Art Consultant.- Betti-Sue Hertz + Jing Wei.
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Dates
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17.07.2020
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TLS Landscape Architecture.  Tom Leader is founder and principal of TLS Landscape Architecture in Berkeley, CA. For nearly 35 years, Tom has grounded his practice in an authentic understanding and appreciation of culture, ecology, craftsmanship and design.

Sincere in his exploration of the creative process, Tom has remained on the cutting edge of design innovation, his work widely recognized for excellence. Since founding TLS in 2001, Tom has sought to create “original, tangible experiences” of place in such award-winning projects as Railroad Park in Birmingham, Alabama, and RIVERFIRST in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and through his provocative site works and art installations. A former partner at Peter Walker + Partners, Tom received a BA in landscape architecture from UC Berkeley and MLA from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

He received the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in Rome in 1998/99 and was a finalist for the Smithsonian National Design Award in 2011. The work of TLS has been featured in various museum exhibitions including “Shanghai Carpet”, in MoMA New York’s 2007 “Groundswell”, concerning international landscape design.

Tom lectures widely and the work of TLS is published frequently. Tom serves the Bay Area community as a member of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission Design Review Board as well as the City of Richmond Design Review Board. A Richmond resident, Tom leads the firm’s pro bono planning work for the future of the 35 mile Richmond shoreline looking at the intersection of sea level rise and seismic stability planning. This year he was elected to the College of Fellows of the ASLA.

 
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Alejandro Zaera-Polo is an architect and co-founder of London, Zurich and Princeton-based Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Maider Llaguno Architecture (AZPML).He graduated from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid with Honors and obtained an MARCH2 degree from Harvard GSD with Distinction. He worked at OMA in Rotterdam prior to establishing first FOA in 1993, and AZPA in 2011, the vehicles where he has developed a successful international professional practice since.

In parallel to his professional activities, Alejandro Zaera-Polo has developed a substantial role within academia. He was the Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and currently occupies the Berlage Chair at the Technical university of Delft. He is also a Visiting Professor at Princeton University and the first recipient of the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professorship at Yale. He has published extensively as a theorist in El Croquis, Quaderns, A+U, Arch+, Volume, Log and many other international magazines and is a member of the London School of Economics Urban Age project.

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Published on: July 31, 2020
Cite: "TLS + AZPML Win Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Central Green Axis Landscape "Aggressively biological”" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/tls-azpml-win-shenzhen-bay-super-headquarters-central-green-axis-landscape-aggressively-biological> ISSN 1139-6415
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