Architecture studio MAD has unveiled its design for the largely subterranean Shenzhen Bay Culture Park museum complex, which will be topped by two pavilions designed to look like groups of large stones.
Shenzhen Bay Culture Park will be built on a waterfront site in the Houhai area of Shenzhen's Nanshan district alongside a 400-metre-high supertall skyscraper designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox as the headquarters of the China Resources export company.

MAD designed the Shenzhen Bay Culture Park, which will sit on a site between the commercial district and the waterfront, to be largely underground so it could be topped with a large park.
"When building a cultural landmark on a site positioned between the dynamic energy of a modern city and quiet timelessness of nature, it should be imagined as a free civic space ? at first a land art park, with its functions complementing its aesthetics," said MAD founder Ma Yansong.
The underground building will be split into two, with the Creative Design Hall and Shenzhen Science and Technology Museum placed on either side of a central auditorium.
Both institutions will contain reception spaces, galleries and cafes arranged around pools sunken into the park above that will brink light into the subterranean building.

Each museum will be topped with a pavilion that will look like a group of "smooth monumental stones" sat in the green park to give it an unexpected appearance.

"I want to create a surreal atmosphe...