Prairie Ark and Nomads' Beacon Tower / BUZZ/ Büro Ziyu Zhuang

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Text description provided by the architects.Ulanqab Grassland belongs to a cultural context that is, by tradition, nomadic. No building is native here. The design challenge is threefold: avoid reducing the project to a cultural costume through symbolic copying; avoid the intrusion of imported urban architectural language; and on completely flat terrain, produce buildings that are both visually legible at distance and genuinely absorbed into the ground they stand on. BUZZ Architects answers with two buildings that establish opposite formal logics — one horizontal and embedded, one vertical and suspended — and through their contrast, frame the site.