Beijing, China, 2002.

This proposal is for a new command centre and headquarters for the Public Security Bureau. The PSB is both China’s uniformed national police service (much like the French Gendarme) and investigative arm (much like the American FBI). The building, on the site of the PSB’s current Utilitarian-Stalinist headquarters, is on Chang An Avenue and lies directly due east of Tiananmen Square. Its neighbours are the Museum of the Revolution, Mao’s Mausoleum and the Great Hall of the People, the two buildings that frame the square’s east and west sides. A large L-shaped structure faces both street-side and the museum, concealing a campus of several auxiliary buildings, one of which is a preserved turn-of-the-nineteenth-century legation. The building uses a solemn, yet grand, vocabulary that easily mixes with the neighbouring Tiananmen national buildings.