Titled Shan Shui Shi Lin (mountain water rock forest), the project is imagined as a Chinese landscape painting, one of the oldest art forms in Chinese culture. The architects had adopted the compositional techniques of a Chinese landscape painting to create a more layered visual experience. With the school’s clock tower resting in the far background, the mid-ground defined by two blocks, and the new block strategically oriented to embrace the foreground of curated rock-scape and landscape, the project becomes an exploration for translating visual pleasure into a functional built form.

Park + Associates seeks to create coherent spaces where function and beauty speak a common language. For the firm, the dialogue of architectural elements shapes a space, takes it beyond its everyday, functional character. It is with this ethos that Park + Associates pursues a vision of architecture as a fundamental articulation of space and form, through which beauty and purity can be discovered. The firm’s strategy is one of subtraction and control to preserve the necessary simplicity of spaces. Each project is undertaken with a rigorous eye for detail, placement and materials, with an artistic sensitivity to the “intangibles” of light, space and form. Charting a journey for the user in an unique space; creating sophisticated spaces that inspire, invigorate, and refine the senses – that is what Park + Associates sets out to achieve. In tandem with its explorations of spaces, the firm remains sensitive to environmental concerns, seeking to appropriate eco-friendly materials and strategies into each project.