UK design firm finds its groove in China

The groundbreaking work, which started in April at the 100,000-square-meter Chengdu Westminster School in Southwest China's Sichuan province marks not only the first of the six campuses of the nearly-900-year-old UK private school in China, but also the largest expansion of a Western school brand into the Chinese education market.

It has also spawned unparallel business opportunities for Broadway Malyan, a London-headquartered architecture firm that has been in charge of the design of the Chengdu school, to make a smooth transition and sustain, if not further accelerate, its growth in China.

As the country's retail landscape has been heavily impacted by the booming e-commerce market, leaving a number of investors wavering in the idea of building more shopping malls, the architecture firm, which established its China office in Shanghai in 2008, is seeing the majority of its work shifting from design for retail to the education sector over the past decade.