To create gardens for the world’s first purpose-built AI laboratory in Shanghai, Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM) looked to the first archetype of all gardens: Eden. The astonishing ascent of artificial intelligence casts the biblical parable of forbidden knowledge in a contemporary light. At the apex of the laboratory, a rooftop garden offers a modern Edenic allegory, serving as a cautionary tale of knowledge’s paradoxical nature: the promise of wisdom and the peril of overreach.
The rooftop garden’s dialectic of contrasting conditions sets the tone for the AI Lab’s multi-level landscape, exploring the hierarchy of intelligence—from data and information to knowledge and wisdom. The gardens throughout the levels of the laboratory complex offer perspectives on knowledge and its limits, challenging researchers to consider the ethical boundaries in their pursuit of innovation.
At the ground level, the gardens visualize the clash between raw information and the human-made analytical structures. Here, wind flow modeling derived from historical site data informs a microclimate-sensitive landscape that expresses the site’s persistent winds.
Dynamic paving patterns compress where wind speeds peak, and kinetic installations, such as the Wind Wand, give physical form to the invisible force of nature. Inscribed with Confucius’s aphorism, “To learn without thinking is blindness; to think without learning is idleness,” the Wind Wand acts as a wind-reading device but also questions the merits of purely analytical thinking, prompting researchers to balance analysis with curiosity, practicality, and intuition.
On the third floor, BAM presents two opposing gardens connected by a cherry tree-lined path, embodying the coexistence of outward-focused collaboration and inward-oriented reflection. One garden, a public forum shaded by an aluminum canopy, provides a stage for human interaction, a space where ideas and achievements take form in shared dialogue. As part of this space, the ‘blue room’ art installation transforms vents into a tribute to pioneers of artificial intelligence, projecting glitch-like images. In contrast, the adjacent proto-Zen Garden rendered in overtly technological materials, offers a sanctuary of introspection. Its sound-dampening walls take the form of a three-dimensional grid, floating from the architecture into the garden, superimposed over the naturalistic landscape with two benches beneath a canopy shade.
At the apex of the building, the rooftop garden encapsulates the cautionary tale of the pursuit of knowledge, with wisdom as its pinnacle. A ‘thinking loop’ path winds between data servers through a pixelated desert landscape of yuccas and cacti, leading researchers to the Edenic oasis garden room. Sheltered beneath the photovoltaic panels of the roof, a selection of subtropical fruit plants creates a lush garden space, furnished with two Edenic Adirondack chairs for lounging amidst the luxurious foliage. The allegorical relationship between human knowledge and biblical myth forms the ultimate meditation for our researchers of machine intelligence.
From the raw clash of data and human made frameworks at the ground level, through the interplay of collaboration and solitary contemplation at the mid-level, to the allegorical rooftop oasis, the gardens invite researchers to ascend through a hierarchy of thought— culminating in a confrontation with the ethical boundaries of their work.
A fundamental question that arose during the development of the AI Lab Gardens was whether to incorporate artificial intelligence tools directly into the design process itself. “We deliberately chose to avoid using contemporary tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney,” explains Wang Zixian, concept design lead at BAM. BAM’s decision to use manual design methods results in a design that emphasizes tactile experience and emotional resonance over algorithmic efficiency. “That’s not to say we rejected technology altogether; we engaged computation and digital modeling, but we did so in a systematic, building-block manner, without relying on scripts or parametric design models,” adds Wang.
“In our case, we hope that our gardens not only create intellectually stimulating and soothing environments conducive to innovative research but also push the researchers to explore the profound connection between humanity and our pursuit of knowledge,” says Dan Gass, co-founder of BAM. In China, where gardens are collectively understood as a cultural medium, BAM’s landscape design embeds layers of meaning that pose timely questions and exclamation points to ponder over, much like landscapes throughout the history have explored the balance between naturalism and abstraction. Today’s gardens speak to the evolving relationships of humanity, technology, and the environment, presenting a narrative that is as relevant as it is consequential.
WLA Artificial Intelligence Lab Gardens
Location: Shanghai, China
Design Period: 2022-2023
Construction Period: 2023-2024 Total Area: 47,400 square meters Landscape Architect: BAM Client: Parkland
Collaborators: PLP (Architecture), Hassel (Interiors), Arup (Structure), HDP (Lighting), Arcplus (Local Design Institute), Beidouxing (Landscape Builder), UAP (Art Installation Fabrication) Photography: Derryck Menere
Sustainability Features
- Green Ratio: 25% featuring innovative plant-based flooring.
- Permeable Paving: 2,460 square meters, accounting for 50% of total paving area.
- Water Conservation: Landscape grading and drainage systems capture 100% of rainwater.
- Rain Gardens Area: 210 square meters.
- Bioretention Pond: 60 square meters.
- On-site Water Storage: 216 cubic meters.
Featured Site-Specific Planting
- Trees: Triadica sebifera, Betula nigra, and Liquidambar styracifolia—selected for reclaimed soil and to withstand saline winds on site.
- Groundcover: Grasses such as Calamgrostis brachytricha, along with bushes like Lonicera nitida.
- Roof Plants: Low maintenance and water-efficient species including Yucca, Agave, and various cacti.
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