In pursuit of building an outstanding global city, Shanghai has proposed the “Park City Planning” that aims at constructing a park city with Chinese characteristics, era features, and Shanghai’s unique traits. By 2025, the number of various parks in Shanghai will increase from over 400 to over 1000. By 2035, the basic construction of Shanghai’s park city will be completed, striving to build 2000 parks and achieve the goal of reaching a park within a five-minute walk. In the steady progress of Shanghai’s park city construction, in addition to continuously building new parks, old parks will also undergo renovation and renewal in conjunction with urban renewal projects to enhance park quality and meet the diverse aesthetic and functional needs of people in the new era. The construction of over 2000 parks will not only better serve residents but also bring enormous costs to urban operations. Therefore, exploring new mechanisms is imperative.
Hongqiao Park is a typical example of park revitalization in this process. Spanning approximately 1.87 hectares, it is situated in the heart of the bustling Changning District, surrounded by renowned shopping malls, schools, and residential communities, within a high-density urban area. The park, formerly known as a children’s traffic park built 30 years ago, served as a place of enlightenment for local residents on traffic knowledge. The original Hongqiao Park had a single function, with a complex layout, confusing pathways, and outdated facilities, posing safety hazards. Under the comprehensive planning of urban renewal in the Hongqiao Economic Development Zone, the park, serving as the “glue” linking surrounding commercial buildings, urgently required upgraded facilities and environmental quality to enhance its functionality.
To accommodate a wider range of potential future uses and reduce the wear and tear of facilities during operation, the transformation of Hongqiao Park goes beyond considerations of design effectiveness. It also contemplates park management and maintenance, innovating the landscape design to function as a city partner. This approach introduces new operators and mechanisms for park operation. The updated design revolves around a central corridor structure, employing artistic design techniques to create a vibrant new park with rich functionality and distinct landmarks. After nearly a year of reopening, the revamped Hongqiao Park has withstood the test of nearby community, office, and commercial crowds. It has been recognized as a sustainable, vibrant shared space, blending art and nature, and has emerged as the new core of the district, attracting a diverse crowd, particularly the younger generation. As a comprehensive commercial hub green space, the design adopts a modern and concise approach and incorporates free-flowing organic curves in its overall stylistic tone, echoing and enhancing the fashionable, diverse, and dynamically open atmosphere of the entire commercial district.
1. The park serves as a container for activities
The park attracts crowds by creating visual and functional focal points. A landmark core structure, the ” Origin Pavilion “, is added in the main entrance area to consolidate and integrate the previously dispersed activity spaces, creating a visual highlight and functional focal point. The design team opted for a high-tech ETFE membrane structure that is self-cleaning and adjustable to build a double-layer bubble canopy. LED lights with variable colors are embedded inside the airbags, and the lighting effects are programmed to simulate the changes of sunset and sky, translating natural landscapes. People immersed under this giant urban sunset lamp find momentary solace and healing for their souls. After debugging, the lighting neither causes excessive light pollution nor satisfies the needs of people of all ages for full-time play, enriching the park’s recreational experience and bringing new vitality and possibilities to the daily lives of the surrounding community residents at night. The design team aims to make full use of space and maximize leisure facilities without overly defining them. During the transformation process, we added wooden benches for viewing, S-shaped landscape art seats built according to the slope, a four-season botanical garden, hillside lawns, and other daily gathering places that are both recreational and multifunctional, beautiful and interesting, in response to crowd activity needs and the current location of trees on the site. The rounded and freeform washed stone seats and flowerbed edges, as classic elements of the park, create multiple possibilities for use, sparking diverse spontaneous activities among users, especially popular among children who sit, climb, or ride on them. These interactive processes create new scenes that have never happened in the park before.
2. Co-building, co-governance, and co-sharing
The transformation of Hongqiao Park from being solely operated by government-related departments to a multi-party cooperation model involves government entities as financiers, community managers as channels for gathering public opinions, and design and construction units as specific implementing bodies. Each party leverages its respective expertise and focuses on its professional priorities, while achieving a balance in decision-making. This new operational model, where landscape architects act as city partners, allows designers to participate in park management, gaining more decision-making power. On one hand, it enables designers’ innovative ideas to receive objective feedback; on the other hand, it facilitates the subsequent maintenance work of the park in a more professional and efficient manner. Communication and negotiation with surrounding residents are integral parts of the design process, spanning from design to construction. Designers collect residents’ opinions and understand their needs through democratic channels of opinion gathering from top to bottom, as well as interviews, surveys, and forums from bottom to top. They then make corresponding design adjustments, such as adding residents’ activity areas, reorganizing running routes, and increasing park entrances and exits, accordingly.
3. Facilities serve as artworks
Incorporating ubiquitous artistic nodes throughout the entire park and several large earth sculptures, we have created a new park characterized by contemporary art. Whether it’s the centerpiece “Origin Pavilion” or the scattered artistic highlights, they are not just functional landscape nodes but also artistic interactive spaces. The park entrance’s logo, with its exaggerated colors and artistic design, creates a spot for young people to take photos. In the quiet southwest corner of the park, a 34-meter-long bright yellow bench stands out among other simple white benches. The hollow patterns on the back of the bench create a dappled light and shadow effect in the sunlight, giving it a lively and vibrant feel. The S-shaped landscape art installation built around several camphor trees on the slope forms a highly interactive and playful artwork. A small arch in the center of the park cleverly integrates with a four-season cloud plant garden, creating a highly recognizable artistic focal point. The high wall along the northern boundary of the park is adorned with unique painted patterns, transforming from an overlooked corner into a popular spot for photo-taking. We have also specially designed two sets of art sculptures for the park, aiming to share beautiful moments with every visitor who explores the greenery by blending into nature and standing tall. In these new spaces that are both observable, playable, usable, and photogenic, the collision between art facilities and human behavior will spark new daily activities and generate new events, deepening the connection between people and this new Hongqiao Park.
Other landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape:
ECO-SMART LAB of Tongji University, YB Landscape Architecture
Location: NO.101 ZUNYI ROAD, CHANGNING DISTRICT, SHANGHAI, CHINA
Design year: 2022
Year Completed: 2023
