Location from Avatar: The Last Airbender by Michael Dante DiMartino & Bryan Konietzko
A gleaming metalbending city of lotus-shaped metal domes — founded by Suyin Beifong as a progressive utopia of art, innovation, and bending excellence.
Zaofu is Toph Beifong's legacy filtered through her daughter Suyin's vision — a city that takes metalbending beyond combat and construction into art, culture, and daily life. The lotus domes are both beautiful and functional, closing at night for protection. Inside, Suyin has built a society focused on innovation and self-expression: metal dancers perform bending as art, architects push structural boundaries, and the city's guard (led by her son Baatar and later betrayed by Kuvira) maintains security with metalbending precision. Zaofu is progressive in ways the rest of the Earth Kingdom is not — it welcomes outsiders, encourages experimentation, and rejects the rigid class structures of Ba Sing Se. But this utopia has cracks: Suyin's refusal to extend her vision beyond Zaofu's domes frustrates those who want to help the wider Earth Kingdom, and it was this frustration that drove Kuvira to leave and build an army. The city smells of metal polish and garden flowers.
A city enclosed within massive lotus-petal-shaped metal domes that open and close with the sun. Inside, the architecture is sleek and futuristic: curved metal buildings, suspended walkways, and gardens integrated into metalwork. Metal dancers perform acrobatic routines on elevated platforms. The city gleams silver and green. Everything has an organic-yet-engineered elegance, as if an artist designed every surface.
Also known as: Metal Clan city, Suyin's city