Ant Group Campus
Type
Wayfinding, Environmental Graphics
Role
Senior Brand Designer, Gensler
The Challenge
Ant Financial's new headquarters comprised ten buildings constructed on the slopes of a mountain in Hangzhou. Because the terrain rose steeply, each building began at a different elevation — all connected by a single shared amenity floor. The campus functioned like a vertical maze. Standard floor-numbering couldn't work: floors didn't align across buildings. The brief asked for a wayfinding system that could orient employees and visitors intuitively across this unusual geography, while simultaneously embedding Ant Financial's brand identity — centred on connection, collaboration, and the ant colony — throughout the space.
The Solution
Rather than conventional numbers alone, we developed a zone logic that reflected how people actually move through the campus and why. Buildings 1–4 (open to visitors and employees) were assigned a three-dimensional network icon: interconnected, open, collaborative. Buildings 5–8 (employees only) used a flatter icon signifying internal connection. Building 9 (leadership) used a minimal single-point mark. The shared bridge floor, which served as the campus's navigational and social anchor, was named Ant Avenue. This worked both as a brand reference and a spatial metaphor: ant colonies navigate the world through shared pathways. The ant silhouette was woven directly into floor numerals across all signage. Environmental branding carried Ant Financial's mission to "Bring the World Equal Opportunities" through large-scale wall installations at key touchpoints, bilingual in Chinese and English throughout.
