Jacob Schwartz Walker

Jacob S. Walker (Jake) is one of three co-founders of Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM). Jake has lived full-time in Beijing, China, since early 2009, and in 2022, he started splitting his time between Boston and Beijing. His firm, BAM, was founded in 2007, and in 2009, it relocated to Beijing. In 2018, BAM opened a second location in Shanghai. BAM is a transdisciplinary practice that operates globally, focusing on the urban landscape. BAM’s work ranges from Master Planning, Landscape, Architecture, and infrastructural projects to installations, exhibitions, and theoretical Urban Initiatives, which regularly grapple with the idea of the landscape as an appropriate realm for cultural and intuitive expression.

BAM gained early recognition for its design of the Indigo Playground, a public play area funded by private developers in Beijing. The project’s success was as much a testimony to the design as evidence of a critical missing public infrastructure in Chinese cities. Its widespread popularity contributed to a boom in playground design across China. In 2022, BAM completed a compact neighborhood sport and play park in Tianjin, linked to the Line 3, Yi Xing Bu metro stop through a retail environment supported by the park’s amenities, such as a beer garden, mazes, playgrounds, ball courts and water features. BAM’s largest architectural project to date is the Shanghai Waste-to-Energy power plant in the Baoshan district on the Yangtze River delta. BAM led the design in collaboration with a team of engineers and local design institutes, overseeing the project from the initial competition phase through to its completion. The plant features municipal solid waste incineration for electricity production and anaerobic digestion for the production of natural gas and includes a visitor route and educational exhibition halls showcasing the facility’s processes while underlining the origins of the global plastic waste crisis. BAM’s work has received numerous accolades. In 2023, the firm was recognized by the Kyoto Global Design Award as one of the top 100 design firms globally. Recently, BAM received a Special Mention as Best Landscape Design Firm of 2024 at the 12th Annual Architizer A+Awards and is highly ranked among Architizer’s 100 Best Architecture Firms in China.

Beyond client-based work, Jake leads many of BAM’s Urban Initiatives which address critical urban and environmental issues through design proposals where no existing client or funding exists. In 2018, the firm’s first initiative, “Reimagining Guomao” (initially launched in 2012), gained significant attention after being presented at a Yixi event, China’s version of TED Talks. The proposal, which reimagined the major intersection in Beijing’s central business district, was politically disruptive and sparked public excitement, as it demonstrated the potential impact of landscape-thinking on the design of hard infrastructure in urban centers. The Reimagining of Guomao intersection eventually led BAM to be featured on Beijing Television for a feature focused on the urban spaces created by elevated roads in Beijing. BAM’s second major Urban Initiative, “Save Chaotianmen,” was conducted as a design studio in 2014, when Jake was a studio instructor at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. The studio explored the complexities of Chongqing’s historic Chaotianmen Gate, focusing on the intersection of preservation, development, ecology, and urban space-making.

Jake has delivered numerous talks and lectures globally. In addition to his two widely viewed in China Yixi talks, the first in 2018 and the second in 2021, he was invited to speak as part of the public lecture series at the University of Toronto in 2014. There, he discussed his firm’s work and the relationship between urban landscapes and Chinese retail environments, highlighting the growing trend of Retail-Parks. In 2015, Jake spoke at the American Society of Landscape Architects annual convention in Chicago for the International Practice Professional Practice Network, addressing “China Futures” and exploring cultural differences in landscape perceptions between the U.S. and China. In 2018, he gave a talk at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, one of China’s leading independent art institutions, on the relationship between playgrounds, play, human cognition, and art, in a lecture titled “Has China Gone Playground Crazy?” In 2024, he lectured at ChinaGSD on developing BAM in China over the past 15 years. Most recently, he spoke at the Philippine Green Building Council annual conference in Davao on the process of real-estate-driven land reclamation in Manila Bay, as a continuation of Manila’s unique urbanization via the production of boundaried spaces and has also lectured at The University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Architecture on the topic of fieldwork.

Jake received his BArch from Cornell University’s Department of Architecture, Art, and Planning, and a Master’s in Design Studies from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He explores a wide range of diverse and experimental forms of architectural, design, and artistic production. Jake believes that architecture, as expressed through building design, plays only a limited role and should be seen as one of many tools and forms of expression in service of a broader landscape vision. He argues that the urban landscape demands the most design attention, particularly in rapidly growing high-density cities, such as in Asia, where urbanization is transforming cities into mega-metropolises. Jake’s early installation works were crucial in establishing BAM’s initial portfolio and cross-disciplinary approach. His recent research delves into the intersections of physical and digital landscapes, exploring synthetic realities as manifested in video game environments, digital communities, and capital flows through the gamification of carbon markets.

Jake’s spring semester seminar course at the Graduate School of Design, “Disciplinary Elasticity and Alternative Practice,” strives to provide students with exposure and insights into possibilities beyond the rigid definitions of professionalized practice in accredited fields, with particular attention paid to practices and ventures outside of the United States.