PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Located in the strategic transitional zone between urban Yueqing and the sea in Zhejiang Province, the Yueqing East Canal Wetland Park embodies the transformation of the East Canal from a flood drainage river into a serene urban ecological waterway. This landscape project integrates the concept of ‘mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, and cities’ as a cohesive life community, emphasizing respect for natural processes and targeting ecological restoration and the rejuvenation of urban life through multifaceted ecological remodeling.
Upon completion, the park, spanning from sea to shore, including the sea-river transition zone, riverine waters, and terrestrial shorelines, successfully achieves the ecological restoration of the sea-river interface within the natural progression process.
SITE CONDITIONS & CHALLENGES
The Yueqing East Canal Wetland Park, surrounded by a natural environment characterized by mountains, rivers, seas, and urban areas, faces the primary challenge of integrating these diverse landscapes to form a cohesive urban landscape framework that flows from mountains, through rivers, merging with the city, and into the sea. Utilizing this distinct natural habitat system to reshape multiple ecosystems, demonstrating ecological resilience, and showcasing nature’s allure poses the second challenge. The third challenge for landscape design is to preserve Yueqing’s unique mountain-sea cultural features while creating a vibrant, water-friendly open space.
DESIGN STRATEGIES
The design respects the site’s natural processes, employing a low-intervention approach for ecological foundation reconstruction. It links urban culture through scene transitions in the sea-river transition space. On the original terrain where rivers meet the sea, wind-resistant plants like Casuarina are planted to stabilize the riverbanks. The creation of ecological corridors and the use of flood storage wetlands and various shore protection structures enhance environmental resilience and safety.
The design team considered water quality improvement, ecological habitat creation, and flood discharge speed. They increased the river’s meandering and shoreline length, combining river channels of varying widths with water features. Submerged and benthic plants are used to reshape the river’s surroundings and bottom ecology, allowing for resilience restoration of the river structure.
SPATIAL NODES
River Channel Reshaping
As the design transitions from urban riverways to marine ecology, it aims to connect ecological breakpoints. From the edge of the forest belt to the dense forest structure, wind-resistant plants are planted to stabilize the embankments. Within the river structure, multiple spaces like flood storage wetlands, floodplains, and ecological depressions are created to absorb rainwater during flooding, alleviating the pressure of stormwater flow on the river channels and embankments, thereby enhancing their resilience and safety.
Ecological Foundation Reconstruction
Expanding the river channel’s water-carrying width enhances sedimentation, inducing ecological changes at the riverbed and creating a refuge for a diverse fish ecology. The design incorporates submerged plants and benthic organisms to increase dissolved oxygen levels, forming a multidimensional underwater symbiotic system of “aquatic plants – aquatic animals – microbial communities,” providing active restoration spaces for aquatic habitats.
The design of pine pile areas, ecological islands, buffer forest belts, and ecological islands offer birds temporary landing points, nesting, foraging areas, and primary habitats, attracting birds to migrate, stay, and reside here.
Water-Accessible Vibrant Spaces
The East Canal, a key urban axis, links the coast with the inland, making the park a hub for ecological and natural education. Not only can visitors learn and birdwatch from the birdwatching tower during migration seasons, but the park also offers activities like marine biology classes and autumn harvest festivals, catering to parent-child ecological learning.
SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE
Yueqing East Canal Wetland Park, leveraging the East Canal, connects the city, riverways, and sea areas, designing and restoring a complete sea-river landscape system. It maximizes natural functions through low-intervention methods, like reshaping the ecological foundation for landscapes, ecology, and habitats for flora and fauna.
The park offers varied living scenes, like festival celebrations, cultural experiences, healthy activities, family leisure, natural education, and quality consumption, catering to different aquatic habitat characteristics. It also narrates Yueqing’s traditional fishing culture and folk customs through birdwatching towers modeled after traditional Yueqing fish baskets and the canal’s floral bridges adorned with intangible cultural heritage dragon carvings.
Other landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape: ThinkCity Design Group Co.，Ltd.
Location: Yueqing City, Zhejiang Province, China
Design year: 2018-2020
Year Completed: 2019-2021
