Earthly Pond Service Center

The Earthly Pond Service Center’s sunken central courtyard encircles a wetland area and lake.
Photo © DuoCai

The buildings and walkways of the Earthly Pond complex are lower in elevation than the surrounding streets.
Photo © DuoCai

A sunken plaza exemplifies changes in elevation on the northern side of the Earthly Pond complex.
Photo © Zhenfei Wang

The wetland landscape surrounds the Earthly Pond complex.
Photo ©Zhenfei Wang

Earthly Pond Service Center masterplan courtesy HHD_Fun

The Heavenly Water Service Center is a sister complex close to the Earthly Pond complex.
Photo © DuoCai

Storefronts line the Heavenly Water Service Center’s rooftop platform.
Photo © DuoCai

Heavenly Water Service Center masterplan courtesy HHD_Fun
Architects & Firms
Qingdao, China
“In search of organized complexity” is the motto of Beijing-based firm HHD_FUN, and that’s just what founders Zhenfei Wang, Luming Wang, and principal architect Hongyu Li created with this new park for the 2014 International Horticultural Exposition in Qingdao, on China’s eastern coast. Designed around a diamond-shaped grid, the Earthly Pond Service Center and its sister pavilion, the Heavenly Water Service Center, accommodate a range of programmatic needs while the infrastructure follows the grade of the landscape, providing multiple access points to and views of the existing ponds. Glazed volumes at varying elevations contain retail spaces, offices, and a post office. HHD_FUN’s scheme preserved much of the site’s existing vegetation and created planted roof decks that connect via winding pathways to a central sunken plaza encircling the wetland area.