A new “future city” is set to spring up in southwest China, featuring an urban design intended to combine industry and technology with the pastoral beauty of the countryside.

The 4.6-square-kilometer (1.8-square-mile) site outside Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, will be home to multiple new universities, laboratories and offices, according to the architectural firms behind the project, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and Gerkan, Marg & Partners (GMP).

Known as Chengdu Future Science and Technology City, the project was unveiled last week via a series of digital renderings. The development is being built in a rural area close to the forthcoming Tianfu International Airport, which is set to open later this year and will make Chengdu only the third Chinese city, after Beijing and Shanghai, to be served by two international airports.

OMA, which designed Beijing’s eye-catching CCTV Headquarters nearly a decade ago, is responsible for a 460,000 square meter (nearly 5-million-square-foot) section of the new city, home to various educational facilities, known as the International Educational Park (IEP). GMP, meanwhile, will lead the design of a series of public spaces and transport facilities in an area dubbed the Transit Oriented Development (TOD).

The two architecture firms were appointed based on separate entries to an international design competition.

Digital renderings of the educational park show a sprawl of buildings with greenery on their roofs, curving in layers like the topography of terraced rice paddies. The buildings, which include university buildings, dorms, national laboratories and offices, mimic the hilly landscape to form a valley, with a 80,000-square-foot building nestled at its center.

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