To create a dynamic urban environment that both acts as a media and messaging billboard for nike and become another landmark for Beijing and the ultimate destination or Mecca for urban Chinese basketball the form both mimics and exaggerates the traditional Forbidden City planning typology in terms of procession, hierarchy, axis and materiality, but the corresponding collection of courtyards are disected into the ‘court’ and the ‘yard’- equating to the professional and the amateur. The underlying playing program therefore, takes on a ‘digital gaming’ quality, where ‘real’ players need to improve their game before they can move to the next level or court, their final quest, the central court- the home of the ‘imperial baller’.