Dutch architecture studio MVRDV has revealed designs for the Bihailou Art Village, a 6,500-square-metre cultural complex now under construction in Shenzhen, China. The project sits in the Shatoujiao neighbourhood, just a short distance from the Hong Kong border. Rather than a single building, the complex reads as a cluster of separate "houses" stacked together, each finished in a different colour, shape and material drawn from the surrounding homes and streets. (Dezeen)

MVRDV, based in Rotterdam, calls the concept a "vertical village." The idea is that each function — a museum, a theatre, shops, restaurants — gets its own tailored volume with its own entrance, its own opening hours and its own identity. Co-founder Winy Maas put it simply: the design "looks complex, but the idea of one space for every function is really quite simple." (Dezeen)

The volumes themselves are a visual mix: boxy blocks, rounded forms and pitched-roof shapes, clad in varied materials. They are linked externally by a network of staircases, escalators and ramps, so visitors move between them the way they might move between buildings in a traditional village street. A landscaped plaza wraps around the ground level, and the firm describes the roof terraces atop each volume as "freely accessible" to the public. (Dezeen)

Inside, the programme is built for flexibility. The performance theatre occupies a double-height volume with a floor-to-ceiling opening that looks out onto the plaza. Its retractable chairs mean the space can switch from a theatre to an exhibition hall without rebuilding anything. Smaller blocks hold shops and restaurants, and each programme can operate independently of its neighbours. (Dezeen)

MVRDV describes the development, on its project page, as a mixed-use cultural and commercial centre designed as an eye-catching focal point for the Shatoujiao community (MVRDV). The studio, whose practice spans architecture, urbanism and research, was also recently named winner of a competition to design a "new world wonder" in its home city of Rotterdam (Dezeen).

What makes the Bihailou Art Village unusual is how it borrows the logic of a neighbourhood rather than the logic of a building. Separate entrances and independent hours mean a museum can stay open late while a café opens early, all within the same structure. The external staircases and ramps turn the walk between programmes into part of the experience. And the colours, shapes and cladding pulled from nearby homes root the complex in its immediate surroundings rather than arriving as a polished object from elsewhere.

For a district that sits at one of the busiest crossings between mainland China and Hong Kong, the design faces both ways: outward toward the border traffic, and inward toward the rooftops and plaza it opens up to anyone walking by.