On the edge of Shenzhen Bay, several pale monumental stones appear to rise from a waterfront park. To some, they resemble gigantic AirPods embedded unexpectedly in the grassy landscape; to others they look like timeless geological Zen landforms. Only gradually does it become apparent that the ground beneath conceals an ambitious new 2 million-square-foot cultural institution.

Beijing-based MAD Architects, founded by Ma Yansong, spent eight years figuring out how to hide a building of this scale so that it would link the city to the park, the indoors to the outside, and allow visitors to enter without even realizing they had crossed a threshold.

“I wanted to escape from the modern reality and be part of nature. Shenzhen is extremely contemporary, so, in my mind, we should escape from this reality,” Ma explains.

Ma’s architectural approach is based, as is much of his work, on the classical Chinese understanding of the relationship between people, nature, and the city, drawing on a worldview where the built and the natural are continuous and symbiotic.

The Shenzhen Bay Culture Square, which has opened in phases since late 2025, proved a particular challenge: it is flanked on one side by the dynamic metropolitan skyline of Shen­zhen, one of the world’s fastest-growing cities, and on the other by the bay itself, part of the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, a major route for migratory birds.

Hidden below the park, and connected by paths, tunnels, and open circulation routes designed to blur boundaries, are the Shenzhen Design Museum, theaters, libraries, an auditorium, and a 7,000-person amphitheater situated around a reflecting pool. According to Ma, from the beginning he had an image of children venturing through ankle-deep water while reflections of sky, stone, and city dissolve amid the ripples.

“When people come here from the city they will feel a little lost. We need some strangeness, some surrealness to make people look for meaning,” Ma says.

Design decisions were both architectural and civic. Shenzhen is in the midst of a major expansion of cultural institutions; new museums, venues, and other entities are going up across the city as it redefines itself as a place not just about manufacturing and technology. In the case of the Culture Square, Ma felt traditional monumentality risked distancing the public from the project itself. “It has to be friendly and welcome people. Their emotional experience is more important than the architectural form,” he says.

Accordingly, there is no single dramatic entrance, no intimidating facade. People wander through the landscape at their own pace, entering intuitively. The park remains open and public regardless of whether visitors buy a ticket to an exhibition inside.

“The buildings become the background,” Ma explains. “It is a space for people to do nothing—to relax and have time to discover.” This approach projects an unusual atmosphere for a cultural institution—children play on sloping roofs, cyclists and joggers make their way along the waterfront, and office workers sit on the grass for some downtime.

Immense technical complexity was required to deliver that ease. The pavilions are clad in strips of 2-inch-thick local granite that have been individually shaped to fit the curved surfaces, concealing an advanced drainage system designed to whisk rainwater away into channels. Ma says this innovation was developed only after two contractors competed to find a solution that met a fixed budget. Extreme geometries, demanding tolerances, and initial estimates were beyond reach until one factory developed a new machine.

MAD has realized several similar briefs in China and now has projects in Los Angeles and Rotterdam, including the recently opened Fenix Museum and the soon-to-open Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, so Ma has a direct comparison between construction ecosystems. In Shenzhen, he says, contractors were willing to take risks, prototype quickly, and solve problems at extraordinary speed.

The building works like orchestral music, grand in its overall scale but comprised of fleeting moments. Cast-in-place concrete ceilings with sprinklers, lighting tracks, and acrylic roof panels support a thin film of water moving with the breeze and bringing in daylight. But the building can also be unexpectedly theatrical: seen from below, a maintenance worker cleaning a transparent pool skylight appears to be scrubbing the sky.

Wayfinding was designed by Kenya Hara of Nippon Design Center, who also worked with Ma on his book, Shanshui City, and here was tasked with creating signage that felt like an integral part of the architecture.

The southernmost pavilion’s viewing platform looks over the bay and Shenzhen’s glass towers. Ma says he thought less about what visitors would see from there than how the building would be read from the city, with the ocean behind it—part of the scenery, not the urban fabric.

Shenzhen is often associated with acceleration, growth, and reinvention. Here, in one of the world’s newest cities, the idea that architecture may slow perception is radical, yet for Ma the intangible and elusive relationship between the man-made and natural worlds is the experience. “I always try to find surrealness in my projects. I think that being not so practical is important for a spiritual quality, especially in China, where everyone is so practical.”

Images courtesy MAD Architects, click to enlarge