MAD Architects' Chaoyang Park Plaza Design Offers Relief From Rigid Beijing Business District
Iwan Baan photographs the fluid, painting-inspired structures.
Until recently, the majority of Beijing’s central business district offered little in the way of notable architecture — buildings were rotund slabs of concrete with rare contemporary touches. However, MAD Architects’ newly completed Chaoyang Park Plaza provides an antidote to the stiffness of the cityscape.
Inspired by traditional topographic paintings from Chinese masters, the firm created a pair of elegantly flowing structures, meant to elicit a bond between the existing environment and the completed build. The designers posited Chaoyang Park Plaza as twin mountain peaks, utilizing the property to invoke the feeling of viewing a landscape of eons past — the plaza’s surrounding low-rise buildings become worn boulders and stones on the mountain slope. Its southwest apartments were created to encourage coexisting with the outside.
Completed after breaking ground in 2014, the plaza is now open for business. For more innovative design, take a look at Jalil Peraza’s prefabricated Face modules.
