Pingshan Badminton Academy.

The client sought to redefine the role of a major sports facility within the contemporary city.

In a context where large stadiums are often conceived as monumental objects—isolated, oversized, and disconnected from daily urban life—the ambition was to create a campus that could support elite athletics while remaining meaningfully integrated with its surrounding community. The project required balancing international-scale performance infrastructure with a civic presence rooted in local culture and identity.

The project was initiated through a municipal vision to establish a world-class badminton academy and sports campus that would serve as both a national training ground and an international destination. The local government sought to elevate the region’s global presence in competitive sport while creating a civic institution that could foster community pride, youth development, and long-term economic vitality.

Rather than delivering a singular stadium, the ambition was to create a best-in-class academy—one capable of attracting elite athletes, hosting international tournaments, and advancing research, medical, and training excellence. The facility was intended to operate as a flagship civic investment: a symbol of cultural identity, unity, and forward-thinking urban development. It needed to perform at the highest global standards while remaining deeply rooted in the local context and accessible to the surrounding community.

The design reimagines the sports campus not as a singular monument, but as a living extension of the city.

Drawing inspiration from the Hakka round houses of the Pingshan region—longstanding symbols of unity and community—the project abstracts the circular logic of these structures into a unifying architectural language that binds the campus together.

To counter the inherent monumentality of large sports facilities, the program is draped and layered into a continuous topographic form. Volumes are pushed downward as landscape is pulled upward, creating an undulating terrain that dissolves the boundary between building and park. Roofs become accessible landscapes, circulation networks extend through and across the campus, and the architecture meets the ground gently at a human scale.

What emerges is not an object in isolation, but a civic terrain—an inhabitable park experience where athletes, spectators, and neighbors move fluidly through a shared environment. In reframing the stadium as shared ground rather than monument, the project weaves sport, landscape, and community into a unified and enduring civic form.