Project Selection: Urban Design of the Exhibition and Consumption Zone in Beijing Daxing International Airport’s Aerotropolis

In 1900, China participated in the Paris World Exposition, showcasing famous architectural landmarks such as the Beijing city walls, the Great Wall, and the Temple of Confucius, offering the world its first glimpse of China’s splendor.

In 2008, Beijing successfully hosted the Olympic Games. The lighting of the Olympic flame and the profound display of Chinese culture during the event captured global attention. Following the Games, Beijing’s urban development experienced rapid progress.

Today, with the southward extension of the central axis, the Daxing Airport stands majestically like a phoenix spreading its wings, becoming a new focal point for Beijing and a future national gateway for China to welcome the world. The Exhibition and Consumption Zone, bearing the weight of this new gateway, shoulders the mission of connecting the past and the future, leading the way forward. It is a gift from China to the world.

Conceptual Framework: The overall design concept is derived from the evolution of exhibition centers:

1.0?Exhibition Zones – Exhibition or City? Isolated Exhibition Areas Away from Urban Centers Early exhibition centers were often located far from urban cores, operating independently. While this model offered advantages in traffic organization, it also created significant disparities in service demand between peak exhibition seasons and off-seasons. During exhibition seasons, services were overwhelmed, and dining costs soared; during off-seasons, businesses struggled, and high-quality services were difficult to sustain.

2.0?Exhibition New Towns – Exhibition + City + Social Hubs In the 2.0 era, exhibition zones began to integrate with urban functions. Domestic and international exhibition centers started to position themselves closer to urban populations, incorporating large-scale mixed-use complexes to serve both urban needs and exhibition demands. While this approach achieved some success, it still failed to fully resolve the issue of vacancy during off-seasons.

3.0?Expo Cities – Exhibition as the Core, Integrating Open Commerce, Social Interaction, Consumption, and Cultural Spaces The Daxing Exhibition and Consumption Zone will pioneer a new paradigm for the future development of exhibitions and cities. Centered around exhibitions, it will link commerce and consumption activities, infuse Chinese cultural elements, and incubate new urban spatial scenarios through exhibition events, creating an Expo City. By leveraging exhibitions to drive urban growth and using the city to promote exhibitions, the Expo City will deeply integrate exhibition commerce, consumption activities, and cultural displays, presenting a distinctly Chinese style to the world through this new national gateway.

Design Philosophy: The Expo City will showcase China’s spatial vision to the world. Drawing from the most iconic elements of Chinese and Beijing urban planning—mountains, water, city, market, axis, and streets—the design integrates these into its structural framework:

·???????? The “City” of exhibitions and the “Market” of consumption are positioned to the north and south, respectively, surrounded by natural landscapes, adhering to the traditional Chinese urban planning principle of “inner city, outer market, and distant mountains and waters.”

·???????? A forward-looking “Expo China Axis” runs through the site, deeply integrating exhibition commerce, experiential consumption, ecological landscapes, and transportation hubs in space, breaking the constraints of seasonal exhibition cycles.

·???????? The northern exhibition city unfolds along the central axis, forming a three-tiered spatial layout.

·???????? The southern consumption market is traversed by an east-west “Beijing Avenue,” lined with trendy boutique exhibitions and trade spaces, aiming to recreate the bustling scenes of the “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” painting.

·???????? Beyond the city and market, the design features mountains and water, with islands emerging from the water, forests thriving, and rolling hills, showcasing the beauty of Eastern urban planning.

Exhibition Zone (Expo City): To address future multi-scale and multi-theme exhibition demands, the spatial layout of the exhibition zone is both innovative and pragmatic:

·???????? The design adopts a 20,000-square-meter modular unit as the basic exhibition module, transforming the traditional fishbone layout into an open and dynamic central atrium aligned with the Expo China Axis.

·???????? The atrium provides rich supporting facilities and flexible outdoor ceremonial and exhibition spaces.

·???????? Integrated with the urban road network, the atrium forms a three-tiered courtyard layout, equipped with three multifunctional lobbies.

·???????? The exhibition area can be flexibly divided to accommodate exhibitions of varying scales.

·???????? Internal corridors seamlessly connect various venues, while external road networks facilitate efficient logistics operations.

The Expo City will become Beijing’s most important international exchange and cultural showcase. Its roof design, resembling the rolling hills of Beijing, creates a light and majestic symbol for Daxing, representing China to the world. It will also serve as a significant urban landmark along Beijing’s southern central axis, continuing to write the cultural narrative of the future.

Consumption Zone (Consumer City): Inspired by traditional “temple fairs” and “markets,” the consumption zone extends the Expo China Axis, centering around Beijing Avenue to form an open and diverse consumption platform.

Core Strategy: The entire Consumer City adopts the classic scale of Beijing’s traditional neighborhoods, constructing a flexible unit model for the future. It forms a long scroll centered on Beijing Avenue, offering an experience of modern China and a world of wonders:

·???????? Beijing Avenue is 24 steps wide, with internal streets 12 steps wide and smaller alleys 6 steps wide. Neighborhood units are 100 steps in size.

·???????? Along Beijing Avenue, through neighborhood zoning and plot division, multiple elastic land-use units of varying scales are created.

·???????? A series of diverse construction and public spaces narrate the ever-changing story of Beijing’s four seasons.

Beijing Avenue stretches east-west, flanked by neighborhood spaces designed for phased implementation and flexibility. The northern end of the avenue faces Dalilu and Lixian Station, offering tightly connected “Beijing Neighborhoods.” The southern end gradually blends into natural landscapes, while the western side features “China’s 18 Courtyards,” an ever-active exhibition hub. Above Beijing Avenue, a variable framework with retractable membrane structures provides summer shade or glass roofs for winter warmth, ensuring year-round consumption experiences in northern climates.

Beijing Neighborhoods: The northern end of Beijing Avenue, facing Dalilu and Lixian Station, offers tightly knit neighborhoods with spaces for art complexes, technology hubs, and office buildings that combine exhibition and interactive experiences. Customized pop-up streets are interspersed within the neighborhoods, with red corridors housing flexible pop-up units called “Little Universes,” hosting cultural, commercial, dining, coffee, and shadow play experiences. The flexible mid-streets provide additional options for space utilization outside the neighborhoods.

China’s 18 Courtyards: The western side of Beijing Avenue features “China’s 18 Courtyards,” a 24/7 vibrant consumption and exhibition hub. It provides international businesses with consumer-facing experience and display spaces, fully customizable by enterprises with room for expansion. The courtyards are connected by charming alleyways, enclosed by building facades and clear boundaries, preserving the traditional Beijing way of exploration.

Future China: The eastern side of Beijing Avenue features themed consumption and hotel clusters, adopting free and organic forms within the same neighborhood scale to accommodate diverse business formats. The Future China zone can host events like concerts, with the avenue’s terminal offering the best viewing area facing the stage and backed by forests, making it a destination for themed consumption and leisure.

Expo City · Expo Landscape “City-Wilderness Integration · A World of Wonders” Landscape Strategy: Leveraging the area’s rich secondary forest resources, the design creates habitats for trees and shrubs, extending the secondary forest into the site and allowing ecological patches to evolve naturally. This forms an elastic, naturally developing, and process-oriented open space. By following the principles of nature, the design aims to create a forested Expo City with a harmonious blend of mountains and water.

In the long term, a large central landscape of mountains and water will establish the area’s blue-green基调, incorporating multiple experiences. The Sundial Tower stands at one end of the axis, offering panoramic views of the Expo City, the sky, and airplanes taking off and landing. Nearby, the interplay of light and shadow in the forests creates a mesmerizing scene. Elevated walkways, transformed from existing forest paths, lead through the secondary forest park to the Daxing National Convention Center, nestled among mountains and water. The international hotel and water stage blend into the natural landscape like ink strokes, while winding waterways and scattered islands evoke the imagery of a phoenix spreading its wings, creating a scene reminiscent of a fairyland.

Project Information:

Project Name: Urban Design of the International Exhibition and Consumption Zone in Beijing Daxing International Airport’s Aerotropolis

Project Scale: Approximately 7.8 square kilometers

Award: Fourth place in expert review

Timeline: November 2022 – March 2023

Organizer: Beijing Daxing International Airport Aerotropolis (Daxing) Management Committee

Design Team: Shenzhen General Institute of Architectural Design and Research Co., Ltd., ISA Internationales Stadtbauatelier (Germany), TEKUMA FRENCHMAN, CBRE

ISA Team:

Lead Designer: Zhang Yajin

Architectural Design Lead: Chen Shenzhou

Ecological Landscape Lead: Wu Zhetao

?Transportation Consultant: Shi Kequan

Project Manager: Wang Haizhou

Team Members: Xue Bowen, Chen Ruoxi, Li Zhongying, Wang Tianyu, Wang Hanxiao, Zhen Baolong, Xu Shaoyang, Lu Rongdi, Qi Tingting, Zhang Yifan, Tao Chonglan

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