Magnetic Tree

The project began with a simple yet deeply meaningful gesture from the client — “I want a tree over the guard room.” In a time when architecture is often driven by grandeur, spectacle, and excess, this intention felt refreshingly grounded. Rather than designing an entrance as a statement of dominance, we imagined it as an environment rooted in nature, landscape, and stillness, a threshold that distances itself from the noise and speed of the city.

The result is Magnetic Tree, an entrance structure conceived around a transplanted tree that becomes both the spatial and symbolic centre of the project. In plan, the design reads as a tree and its invisible magnetic field radiating outward, with the built form shaped as though drawn into its presence. The architecture does not compete with the landscape; instead, it appears held together by the gravitational pull of the living canopy above.

Across cultures, trees have long been understood as protectors, shelters, and sacred anchors within collective memory. This idea inspired the project’s spatial language — imagining the tree not as an object placed within architecture, but as the force around which architecture itself is organised.

Exposed brick structures with deep earthy redness frame the entrance, contrasted by vertical green that converges the built form. Curvilinear slices of brick gently approach the tree, allowing the architecture to recede softly into the landscape rather than confront it. Together, the built form and vegetation create an arrival experience that feels quiet, rooted, and alive