Tianqin Bay, Shenzhen, China

Harmony and Balance is a retreat from the typical patterns and stresses of everyday life. It is designed specifically for the residents of Tianqin Bay, a development master planned by Line and Space on a private peninsula jutting out into Dapeng Bay.

Heavily involved in the development of programmatic requirements, the facility is conceived not as a typical social club, but as special place that is at once in unity with the immediate earthly surroundings of earth and the expansive sea and sky that envelop the site. In addition to world-class spa facilities, a tai-chi garden and a small cafe, spaces for the making, study, and appreciation of art are provided. It is a place of emotion and beauty and is intended to be a community treasure, unique in the world.

The structure, buried in the top of a mountain, derives its shape in response to the geography and slowly reveals itself after engaging the visitor in a sensory experience of compression and release that transcends the visual aesthetic.