Page 50 - Designing Ways 257

ON THE
TERRACE

MAHA Residential Gardens Popular Choice

Winner at the 2022 Architizer A+ Awards

Beijing, China

eijing MAHA Residential Park wins landscape - time given to mature, time
the 2022 Architizer A+ Popular and effort to care for it and maintain it.
BChoice Award in the Private Garden A luxurious landscape can therefore be
category. With the MAHA Residence understood as a physical manifestation of
Grand Opening scheduled for October of time.
this year (2022), the soft opening of the
MAHA Gardens last summer featured an Luxury redevelopment project
exclusive open-air fashion show by British The site occupies the northern edge of
designer, Jenny Packham. Chaoyang Park inside the Fourth Ring
Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM) Road. At the time of engaging BAM,
worked closely together with renowned the site architecture was a mixture of
hotelier, Adrian Zecha, and the MAHA four occupied residential towers, five
team to design the landscape and develop incomplete and unoccupied towers,
a multiphase masterplan strategy to a Chinese-styled members' club, and
seamlessly weave a complex mixture of multiple classically-styled gatehouses
preexisting contemporary and classically- in varying states of functionality. The
styled elements on the site. existing landscape was also a smorgasbord
The fast-paced world of Chinese real- of functional and dysfunctional spaces,
estate development is not well suited to including a scaled replica of an imperial
ideas, themes, and methodologies based garden, and a beautiful and maturing
on slowly maturing landscapes. However, man-made forest.
BAM believes that luxury in a landscape BAM’s design for the landscape and
is fundamentally an expression of time. master plan unifies disparate aspects
While the quality and richness of materials of the site together in a seamless series
in architecture and interior design tend to of gardens, functional spaces, and
be defining factors of 'luxurious', BAM circulatory pathways. The existing
believes that time occupies that role in a landscape spaces are blended with new

50 Issue 257 • dw