Lingnan Oasis — A Cultural Sanctuary for Daya Bay
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Design Firms: Cook Haffner Architecture Platform (CHAP) + Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Planning and Design Institute Co., Ltd. (THUPDI)
Principal Architects: Erlend Blakstad Haffner, Branko Belaćević, Sir Peter Cook
Project Manager: Isabelle Chi Yan Lee
Design Team: Harshdeep Arora, Cao Keqin, Ding Jiahan, He Yishu, Huang Zhixin, Xie Shihui, Yang Yifang, Zeng Ziying
Landscape Consultant: Zou Yujun
Façade & Sustainability Consultant: Ksenia Dyusembaeva
Client: Huizhou Daya Bay Runhua Tourism Development Co., Ltd.
Location: Daya Bay, Huizhou, Guangdong Province, China
Year: 2023
Gross Floor Area: 75,171 sqm
Located in Daya Bay, Huizhou — Guangdong Province, China — the Daya Bay Comprehensive Cultural and Creative Park stands as a visionary response to the cultural aspirations of a region in rapid urban transformation. In 2023, the international design consortium of Cook Haffner Architecture Platform (CHAP) and Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Planning and Design Institute (THUPDI) was selected as one of five finalists from more than 40 global design teams. Their proposal — Lingnan Oasis — reimagines the park as an ecological urban sanctuary: a living cultural landscape deeply rooted in the architectural heritage of the Lingnan region.
Project Background
Daya Bay Development Zone borders Pingshan District, Shenzhen — one of China's most dynamic economic and cultural urban centres. To strengthen civic life and respond to the region's cultural aspirations, local authorities initiated an international design competition for a comprehensive cultural park. The brief was ambitious: to create a facility that would become a "cultural highland in the southern part of Huizhou" — a public landmark with domestic appeal, regional influence, and lasting civic significance.
Project Overview & Programme
The Daya Bay Comprehensive Cultural and Creative Park has a total gross floor area of 75,171 square metres, organised around three primary functions: a Public Library (20,000 sqm), Cultural Activity Spaces — encompassing a Youth Palace and Cultural Centre — and Supporting Commercial Facilities. These components are not conceived in isolation; they are woven into an integrated urban precinct that serves the full spectrum of the community: children, youth, families, and professionals alike.
Design Concept: A Lingnan Cultural Community
The CHAP+THUPDI design team adopted a deeply context-specific strategy rooted in the architectural heritage of the Lingnan region. Three typological elements from traditional Lingnan architecture underpin the spatial language of the scheme: the arcade building (骑楼, qīlóu), the cooling alley (冷巷, lēng xiāng), and the Lingnan garden (岭南园林). These are not applied as superficial ornament; they are reinterpreted as climatically performative and experientially rich devices that shape the entire built environment.
“A luminous Urban Oasis. An ecological complex within the city where you can experience layered, forward-thinking public open spaces and revel in the pleasures of nature.”
The building mass is deliberately fragmented into small-scale clustered volumes — a settlement-like arrangement that echoes the intimacy and human scale of historic Lingnan towns. Cultural spaces are distributed across the landscape like islands within a garden. Between clusters, a system of semi-open, shaded, and naturally ventilated spaces manages thermal comfort in Daya Bay's subtropical climate without over-reliance on mechanical cooling — a meaningful passive sustainability strategy woven into the building's core spatial logic.
The Canyon — Arrival Experience & Civic Gateway
A key formal and experiential device in the scheme is what the design team calls The Canyon — a system of narrow, shaded alleyways that channel visitors through the complex. Each of the three primary functions is announced by a generous gateway entrance. As visitors move through these canyon-like passages, they are welcomed into an expansive six-storey atrium that opens dramatically upward toward the sky, flooding the interior with filtered natural light. This vertical space acts as the civic heart of the complex — a memorable threshold between street life and cultural experience.
The Library — A 21st-Century Learning Hub
At 20,000 square metres, the Library is the park's largest component and its intellectual cornerstone. The design moves far beyond the traditional notion of a library as a repository of books, reimagining it as a vibrant hub for learning, socialising, research, education, and entertainment. A vertical city approach interconnects each programmatic zone through a multi-dimensional movement network, creating a layered community ecosystem that is adaptive and built to serve generations to come.
Cultural Centre — A Stage for Local Heritage
The Cultural Activity zone integrates the functions of a Youth Palace (青少年宫) and a Cultural Centre (文化馆), creating a forward-thinking, multipurpose destination for arts, performance, and community life. The design philosophy embraces innovation while remaining anchored to the context: its spaces are conceived to showcase and celebrate local Lingnan culture while remaining open to global influences and evolving community needs. This is public architecture that performs as a stage for civic life.
Commercial Zone — Activating the Urban Realm
As the most public and open component of the programme, the commercial service zone is designed to activate the ground plane and connect the complex to its wider urban context. Cultural markets, food and beverage outlets, and retail pop-up spaces are tightly integrated with the Central Plaza and the Open Canyon. The open ground floor interface allows commercial activity to spill outward into the public realm. Aerial bridges connect the commercial levels, and a system of overhanging roof shading creates comfortable, inhabited roofscapes. The result is a layered 360-degree commercial experience that encourages movement, discovery, and social interaction at every level of the building.
Façade, Elevation & Materiality
The façade language is a direct architectural expression of Lingnan climate responsiveness. The elevations are characterised by layered screens, deep overhangs, and a rhythm of solid and void that manages solar gain while maintaining visual connection to the landscape. The material palette references warm, earthy tones native to the region — creating a building that feels grounded in its place without being historicist or literally mimetic. The interplay of light and shadow across the façades throughout the day creates a dynamic visual identity that transforms from morning to evening.
Landscape Strategy & Ecological Vision
Nature and landscape are not afterthoughts in this proposal — they are foundational to the entire design strategy. The park aspires to be a true urban oasis (都市绿洲): a luminous, verdant refuge in the heart of a busy city, where visitors can wander through gardens, experience the pleasures of nature, and find respite from the demands of urban life. The landscape plan integrates lush planting, water features, and ecological corridors between the building clusters, creating a microclimate that is perceptibly cooler and more comfortable than the surrounding city. The design envisions a future where nature and culture are genuinely inseparable.
Image Credits
All images © Cook Haffner Architecture Platform (CHAP) + Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Planning and Design Institute Co., Ltd. Republished on www.archzig.com for editorial and case study purposes only.
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