UNStudio won the urban planning competition for the campus in Beijing

Yanqing is one of the districts of the seventeen-million-strong Beijing, located eighty kilometers from the city center. In the autumn, an international competition took place here, inviting a total of nine foreign architects (Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Christian de Portzamparc, or Kees Christiaanse). Ultimately, the design by Amsterdam's UN Studio won, which strives for the harmonization of opposites. The main motto of the competition was “Urbanity in Nature”, and under the lofty name of the project “Creative Zone” lies “an urban typology for a new open environment for study”, which can also be described as a campus. The UN Studio design consists of the densification of structures at two scales: a green belt and urban texture. The building structure is formed by two mutually intertwined bands. The composition of “architectural park”, studios, and pavilions is derived from the Chinese character 一步一景, which translates to “a view for every step”. The technology park is meant to become a showcase of the best in the field of experimental projects and innovative designs. The building program is based on four development phases of the product “idea, development, production, and sales”, representing a continuous process that is meant to illustrate all manufacturing processes up to the sale of the product itself.