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A landscape that rises with the architecture
Central to the design is a walkable roof park that extends the surrounding landscape over and around the museum. Led by B+H, the landscape strategy connects the building with Yanzi Lake, the surrounding ecological park and the region’s wider network of rivers, wetlands and mountain landscapes.
A sinuous green spine creates a generous and accessible route across the roof, guiding visitors through a sequence of planted terraces, gathering spaces and viewpoints. The gradual changes in elevation create a natural journey across the building, opening new perspectives over the museum and its surroundings while allowing people to experience the site beyond the galleries.
By transforming the roof into civic terrain, the museum becomes part of Shenzhen’s public realm. Its plazas, terraces and planted spaces invite people to gather, explore and move through the site as part of everyday city life. The landscape is not a separate layer around the architecture; it is an organising element that connects the museum’s cultural programme with its ecological and urban setting.
Bringing learning into the landscape
The roof park extends the museum’s educational mission outdoors. Organised as a series of thematic environments, the landscape interprets the evolution of life and the natural history of the region through an accessible journey of discovery.
Rather than presenting nature solely as something to be observed, the landscape encourages visitors to engage with it directly. Interactive spaces and tactile features invite exploration, play and learning, creating a more open and participatory museum experience.
Connections between galleries, atria, terraces and planted spaces reinforce this continuity between inside and outside. The landscape becomes a natural extension of the museum’s teaching and exhibition spaces, creating an interconnected environment in which architecture, ecology and content work together.
Supporting a resilient ecosystem
As part of the wider Yanzi Lake ecosystem, the landscape also creates valuable habitat within a dense and rapidly changing urban context. The design maximises planted areas across the site and roof while drawing attention to native species and the ecological character of the region.
The museum’s landscape reveals Shenzhen’s natural history while encouraging visitors to consider their own relationship with the environment. In this way, its ecological narrative extends beyond the building and site to engage with larger questions of biodiversity, stewardship and resilience.
Translating vision into built reality
Realising a museum of this scale and complexity required architecture, engineering, landscape, exhibition planning and construction expertise to work together across disciplines, geographies and project phases.
As lead consultant and executive architect, B+H helped coordinate design delivery across the consortium, maintaining continuity between the approved design intent, local requirements and the completed visitor experience. B+H worked across architecture, landscape, engineering and specialist consultant teams to integrate the museum’s galleries, public areas, back-of-house functions, building systems and inhabitable roof landscape.
Through design reviews, technical coordination and continued involvement during construction, B+H helped carry the project from concept to completion while protecting the relationship between architecture and landscape that defines the museum.
The result is both a building and a public landscape: a major cultural institution embedded within a new civic environment, connecting science, nature and everyday urban life.
