Spanning nearly two million square meters on a peninsula sheltering Shenzhen’s Qianhai Bay, Tencent’s new headquarters serve as the domestic anchor for the tech giant’s global operations in China. Once completed, it will be one of the largest tech campuses in the world, roughly the size of Manhattan.

The campus is entirely car-free. Designed by an international consortium of architects and engineers, the neighborhood is united by a complex open space network developed by SWA—split across three levels and knitting together residential, educational, office, research, and public facilities from end to end. A concealed monorail runs underground, enabling quick travel across campus. At ground level, pedestrian paths offer direct connections between buildings. Above, a network of elevated landscape decks, the campus’s defining spatial feature, links major structures with planted walkways, evoking the feeling of moving across a canopy. Along the bay, mangrove forests that help buffer storm surge.

An extraordinary diversity of building sizes, typologies, and landscape treatments are integrated throughout the development, ranging from one to 30 stories and framing panoramic views of the bay, city, and broader Pearl River delta. Once completed, the campus will accommodate up to 80,000 residents and workers. Organized into five blocks, design and construction is proceeding in phases, with initial community and office spaces opening in 2025 and overall completion anticipated in 2029.