MAD Architects Buries a Shenzhen Culture Complex Beneath a Park and Lets Granite Pebbles Break the Surface

Houhai is one of the most aggressively vertical districts in China: a Nanshan headquarters hub where glass towers stand on land that was entirely reclaimed from the sea. On the bay side of that skyline, MAD Architects has completed Shenzhen Bay Culture Square, a 188,000 m² complex on a site of roughly 51,000 m². It houses the Shenzhen Design Museum, nine professional galleries with about 50,000 m² of exhibition space, theaters, libraries, an auditorium and a 20,000 m² collection storehouse. It is one of the city's "Ten Major Cultural Facilities in the New Era," and it took eight years to design.

What makes it worth your attention is how little of that program it shows. Three halls, North, South and Thematic, surface as white granite pebbles, while most of the floor area sits beneath a public park of terraces, ramps and lawns. The roofs are planted and walkable, there is no main entrance, and the park stays open whether or not you buy a ticket. In a district that measures ambition in height, MAD has made a major civic institution read as topography, and that is a sharper urban argument than another tower would have been.

Stones at the Foot of the Towers

Seen across the water or from among the park trees, the contrast is blunt. Glass towers rise in the background; the culture square sits low in front of them, rounded and opaque. Ma Yansong has said he wanted some strangeness, even surrealness, so that visitors would look for meaning, and these views are where that intent lands most clearly. The pebbles do not compete with the skyline. They refuse its terms.

The positioning matters too. Skyscrapers sit on one side of the site, while the bay, Shenzhen Talent Park and mangrove wetlands sit on the other, with Hong Kong in view across the water. The complex works as a hinge between financial district and coastline, and its low profile keeps the line of sight to the bay open instead of walling it off.

A Skin of Hand-Fitted Granite

The volumes are clad in natural white granite, cut into narrow strips that follow each curve. Architectural Record reports the stone is local and about 2 inches thick, with every strip shaped individually to suit its position on the surface. That is a demanding way to build a doubly curved form, and it pays off: up close the strips give the domes a fine grain that a panelized metal or GRC skin would struggle to match, and the ribbon windows read as cuts through solid mass rather than gaps in a curtain wall.

The stone does technical work as well. Behind the cladding is a drainage system that collects rainwater and directs it into channels, which matters on curved roofs in a subtropical city with heavy seasonal rain. The smooth exterior holds up only because the plumbing stays out of sight.

A Building Without a Front Door

MAD deliberately avoided a front or back. Entrances open at the various urban edges, and you reach the galleries by moving through the landscape: across plazas, down sloped lawns, along curving paths. The timber bench facing a domed volume and the glazed concourse opening onto planted courts show the same idea from two sides. Public ground continues inside, and interior space looks back out onto the garden.

The centerpiece of this outdoor realm is a reflecting pool ringed by a 7,000-person amphitheater. Ma pictured children wading through ankle-deep water, and the pool has a transparent basin that also serves as the roof of a room below. We think it neatly sums up the project's attitude: a public play surface and an institutional ceiling, handled as one element.

Daylight Pulled Down from Above

With so much program underground, the main interior challenge is light, and MAD answers it by bringing light in from above. Oval skylights pierce pale concrete vaults, a stone-clad core rises through a ring of daylight, and the galleries use diffused toplight. A ring-shaped atrium winds between the stone volumes and links the galleries, while internal courts draw daylight deep into the plan.

Inside, the materials switch from granite to fair-faced concrete. In the standard galleries the ribbed concrete structure is left exposed as the ceiling, with lighting and services tucked between the ribs. The scooped coffers above the curved vitrines show this approach at its best: structure, light and mechanical systems combined into one legible surface instead of being hidden behind a suspended ceiling. The South Hall adds a long-span domed gallery, and the Thematic Hall reaches 30 m at its tallest space, so the buried complex does not feel like a basement.

Passages as Public Rooms

Paths, tunnels and open routes join the underground program, and MAD has treated them as spaces worth spending time in. The curving concrete corridors are lined with oval openings that change character through the day: crisp and cool at noon, glowing yellow at dusk. A child on a balance bike pointing down the passage is a fair test of whether a circulation space works for the public, and this one passes.

The curves also carry out the brief's wayfinding idea. Without a single axis or grand entrance, visitors find their way by moving, and the bending corridors reveal the space a little at a time. That suits a park, though first-time visitors looking for a specific gallery may need good signage to avoid losing their way.

Plans and Drawings

The ink sketch captures the concept in a few lines: low ovals and a single taller egg rising from a rolling ground line. The axonometric clarifies how it was built, with discrete pod-shaped halls sitting on a green landscaped podium that holds two lakes. The long section is the most revealing drawing in the set, showing how much of the building lies below grade beneath its looping roof.

The ecology diagram is worth reading closely. It cuts through lagoon, waterfront park and grove, marking the birds and butterflies expected in each zone. Shenzhen Bay lies on the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, a migratory bird route, so treating the landscape as habitat as well as amenity is a responsible move on reclaimed coastal land.

Why This Project Matters

Chinese cities have spent two decades commissioning cultural landmarks as sculptural objects, often isolated on plazas and sealed behind ticket gates. Shenzhen Bay Culture Square takes a different position. The institution is generous at ground level and restrained on the skyline, and its roofs, pool and amphitheater work as civic space at all hours. Whether the pebbles impress you or not, the decision to put most of 188,000 m² beneath a free public park is the part other cities should study.

It also shows that MAD's organic formal language can carry real material discipline. Individually fitted local granite, exposed ribbed concrete that holds the services, concealed drainage and diffused toplight show that the forms were thought through in detail. The open question is long-term performance: how well the stone weathers, how the planted roofs hold up and how the phased opening matures. As a model for placing culture between a financial district and a bay, though, it sets a high bar.

Shenzhen Bay Culture Square by MAD Architects (Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, Yosuke Hayano), Houhai, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, China. Area: 188,000 m². Completed: 2026. Photography: Blackstation, Chao Zhang, Yumeng Zhu, Hufton Crow, ACF, Jiaqi Chen.

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