The site occupies the northern edge of Chaoyang Park inside the Fourth Ring Road. At the time of engaging BAM, the site architecture was a mixture of four occupied residential towers, five unoccupied towers, a club and multiple Classical Chinese and Roman gatehouses in varying states of functionality. The existing landscape was also a smorgasbord of functional and dysfunctional spaces including a scaled replica of an imperial garden and a beautifully maturing manmade forest.

BAM’s design for the landscape and masterplan weave disparate aspects of the site together into a seamless series of gardens, functional spaces, and circulatory pathways. The existing landscape spaces are blended with new landscapes. Conflicting styles, time periods, and cultural references are smoothed out with BAM’s Minimalist landscape approach.

Luxury in the landscape is measured in time. A garden cannot be constructed in a day, it must grow. Landscapes must be maintained, cared for, and cultivated. When we look at a masterful or luxurious landscape, we see time itself. We see years of growth, years of maintenance, and seasonal progressions. Unlike architectural fields which depend upon rare or expensive materials to express luxury, the landscape can only truly achieve luxurious expression measured in years or decades. BAM’s idea for the landscape is to establish a grander sense of time, to plant the foundations of a landscape that will grow and continue to mature for generations.