Dancing Lines ——The Central Garden of Zhongguancun Software Park

Location: Shangdi District, Beijing

Client: Zhongguancun Software Park Development Co., Ltd

Area: 5.5hm2

Design & Completion: 2003-2004

Located in the northwest suburb of Beijing, Zhongguancun Software Park (ZSP) is an important property of Zhongguancun Science & Technology Park, known as China’s “Silicon Valley”.

The Central Garden, situated in the center of the Software Park, is the largest green area in the ZSP. We believe that the garden should not only reflect the unique characteristics of IT enterprises, but also meet the diversified demands of R&D staff, offering them a natural, inspiring, beautiful, fashionable and comfortable place for relaxation. The fundamental task of our design is to find the landscape language and spatial order to express the characteristics of IT industry.

We capture the design inspiration from our understanding of the software industry. We think, software development is building a platform for information exchange, where all kinds of information and data are transmitted to the end-users via various electronic circuits. These data lines, either wired and visible, or wireless and invisible, contain high-tech intelligence and contribute to the framework of today’s information world. All these lines are organized intricately.

Inspired by that, the designers employed intertwined lines to articulate this conception. These lines, symbolizing different implication, include Crystal Line, Water Line and Data Line. All the lines intertwine with each other, like the interweaving of all kinds of electric circuits in the electronic world, and generate a special garden layout and rich spatial variations. With unique structure, distinctive characteristic, concise form, rich spatial changes and application of many industrial materials, the garden conveys the IT enterprises’ characteristic of industrialization, modernization and technologization.

Landform is designed to create spaces and enrich landscape, and to collect and infiltrate rainwater as well. All the rainwater in the site will be approached in two ways, directly penetrating into the ground, or discharging into the lake after being collected and purified.

The lake in the garden is the key link in ZSP water cycle. On the one hand, rainwater will flow into the lake, and on the other hand, the sewage produced by ZSP will also be discharged into the lake after treatment by the underground wastewater treatment station. Rainwater and gray water become the water source of the lake and are used for irrigation of the central garden. That improves the water use efficiency.