BAM designed the AI Lab’s landscape as a series of gardens catering to the work cycles of human researchers, including ground-level spaces, the L3 roof deck, and the top roof garden. The design is based on the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) pyramid, with each garden reflecting a specific level of this hierarchy. The pyramid's conceptual building blocks are reflected in the architecture’s stacked massing, while each of the three gardens presents a dualism, inviting researchers to contemplate the relationship between the natural and artificial.
Installations, visual language, and routing across each conceptual layer of the building create distinct experiences with unique atmospheres, prompting different mindsets, moods, and movements for various occasions and stages of knowledge-making. The project sets a precedent for a dedicated research environment in artificial intelligence, facilitating research while also making it visible to the public. In both aspects, the landscape plays a crucial role, manifesting abstract, intangible concepts in the physical spaces of the facility in an intuitive way.
It correlates various levels of complexity and abstraction with the spatial experience of the building as it unfolds for the user.
The WLA Artificial Intelligence Lab Gardens incorporate various sustainability measures, including permeable pavement, rain gardens, rainwater tank, microbial filter beds and green roofs designed for the project to achieve the China Green Star Three, Net Zero Building, LEED Gold and WELL Platinum benchmarks.