Unlike most parks, Daxing Park touches the doorstep of the surrounding buildings. The parking garage, subway station, restaurants, homes, and commercial spaces all plug directly into the fabric of the park.

In this context the design of the park does not call for the broadly planted zones or grand spaces of English style parks. Rather it calls for a scattering of outdoor rooms, a sequence of intensely programmed and useable park spaces that fill the territory between the architecture.

Like confetti, BAM packs the space of the park with geometrically defined rooms and spaces. These rooms are linked into a variety of sequences by paths meandering through the interstitial space. The programs include a chess pavilion, basketball courts, and ice skating plaza, an amphitheatre, dancing plazas, a soccer mini-stadium, a hedge maze, and of course playgrounds.

The green interstitial spaces play an important role in providing tree canopies for shade, absorbing water run-off from paths and architecture, storing and treating stormwater for park irrigation, and all the other benefits ornamental landscapes provide. But it is clear that these functions are secondary to providing human environments for cultural engagement.

The Daxing Park prompts questions of the park typology in an era where private developers are keen to edge out competition by partnering with public interests. Can these zones become truly public parks, or will they become neighborhood territories dominated by the lucky residents surrounding them? The case of Daxing Park points to a wide user base promoting a more public approach. Residents of the houses opening onto the park play chess and Ping-Pong alongside those who have travelled by bike from the surrounding developments. It remains to be seen as the park matures if the subway and park and ride facilities will pull in an even broader public to enjoy the park.