BAM is an award-winning, multidisciplinary team of landscape architects, artists and architects founded by Daniel Gass, Jacob Walker and Allison Dailey. BAM’s work originated from the creation of installations in the public realm. Founded in 2007, BAM became anomalous as a locally grown design firm in China started by foreigners. Over its 12-year history BAM has evolved to become one of China’s leading urban and landscape design firms with offices in Beijing, and Shanghai.

As new technology and rapid urbanization drastically shape the environment, perceptions of where and what nature is, are slow to be reimagined and continue to become more outdated. As our relationship to nature changes so too does how we value our urban and rural surroundings. BAM believes that just as the constructed landscape is a cultural artifact, the definition of what nature is, lies in CULTURE. Humanity’s varied and culturally conditioned definitions of NATURE are reflected in the urban spaces and infrastructural systems of cities. Now that the majority of humans live in urban conditions, most of the landscapes which humans interact with are constructed, thus to deny the understanding of landscape as a constructed CULTURAL medium devalues its inherent power.

BAM as a design practice typically focuses on the design of urban landscapes. In our definition, The Urban Landscape is everything outside of the buildings and BAM is interest is in all of these spaces in between; the edge conditions, boundaries, and periphery. BAM sees urban landscape as the true material of the city and believes that in the future, landscapes rather than buildings should be the true icons of the city and that the culturally considered landscape is paramount in creating places where people can enjoy living.

Continuous change and evolution have been inherent in BAM’s development. Although always focused on the landscape spaces of the urban realm BAM’s strategy of ‘just say yes’ has led to an extremely diverse, Ballistic body of work, which fits uncomfortably into traditional definitions of Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, Architecture, or Installation. As BAM moves forward and continues to evolve in new and unforeseen ways, our unwavering stance that the landscape is the most important design realm of the 21st century forms a core pillar of our belief. The perpetual debate within the professions in and around the medium of landscape regarding the relationship of landscape to aesthetics, culture, and the environment further illuminates BAM’s enigmatic slogan “Nature is an Idea.”

Longking Pro Environmental Campus Industrial Public Landscape by Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM) The splendid garden is located on former farmland in a pristine valley in the mountains, north of Longyan City in China. Natural springs and the overflow of the mountain reservoir flow through the center of the mega industrial campus. The customer Longking specializes in industrial environmental protection equipment and research. To create this romantic and colorful landscaping the team used environmental technologies developed in-house. The landscape is a new form of recreation and serves as a showcase for people to better understand the underlying natural processes upon which are depended.

Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM)

South Sanlitun Road 28, 2nd floor, Chaoyang District Beijing

100020

P: +86 010 6592 8862 x 801

F: United States

Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM) is IAD member since 2023, with 2047 IAD rating.