a park for everyone and everyone in their park:
BAU189 Hongqiao Park

Shanghai City, China

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Discipline

Architecture, Landscape Architecture

Typology

Public open space

City

Shanghai City, China

Date

2004-2006

Status

Completed

Client

Shanghai Changning District Hongqiao

Program

Redevelopment of Children’s Traffic Park, including new mixed-use building

Hongqiao has recently lost its reputation as Shanghai’s premier business district. Without vision, the district has stooped to the pursuit of clichéd themes to maintain its competitiveness: streets themed on the Champs Elysees and 5th avenue; shopping centres themed on Italian piazzas; and slick towers set back in plazas. Additionally, the district is re-constructing a handful of public projects including a theatre and a businessperson’s park (shang wu gong yuan). The park is the conversion of a dilapidated children’s traffic school park.

Parks in China tend to be valued by their district government patrons as symbols of progress towards modernisation. The users, however, value parks as places to socialise, promenade, dance, pursue hobbies, exercise, engage with nature, and take their children to play. With a patron whose objectives prohibit even the use of children’s play equipment, can a park become a complex and living component of the city?

By maintaining the park’s existing structure of miniature streets, a highly accessible park can be created: one that provides a memory of the traffic school park. By reshaping the street grid through a more dynamic geometry, the newness that the patrons desire is also achieved. By shaping the street network to better accommodate the existing usage patterns, a continuity of cultural habits such as dancing and tai-chi can occur.

The miniature street network, now a complex and dynamic path network, allows a high level of access from the adjacent streets and a variety of circulation choices within the park. Being a net it has no centre, thus resisting the framing of activity commonly imposed in most local parks.

Adjusting the design of the existing path grid has created loops and specific networks. Widening a series of paths and providing them with informal seating creates a linear plaza network. This arrangement spreads places for dancing, exercising and playing to all parts of the park. The plaza network widens significantly at the two street corners to create areas high in activity and accessibility. A second network, an intimate shaded path network, allows for walking throughout the entire park in a cool low-activity environment. A red rubber running track loops around half the site and ramps over a newly formed hill. This facility attracts a new user group to the Chinese park.

A diagonal short-cut path is created to attract those who usually would not enter the park. It brings a steady stream of business people into contact with the heart of the park, without having to partake in the park’s activities. Adjacent to this path are tables suitable for working and meetings.

Children are conspicuously absent from Chinese urban environments, as they are usually kept indoors studying. Without detracting from the clients’ desire for a playground-free park, a high number of discreet and informal play opportunities are provided in the new park. Landscape interventions such as topographies of giant steps and ramps serve as places for adventure and places for the invention of games. Undulating path borders are provided as alternative paths for kids.

New hills are formed into stepped grass slopes to provide an informal amphitheatre seating area. As a popular symbol of progress, open green lawns were demanded, however park users are currently prohibited from walking on these lawns. As a subversive strategy, to allow people’s interactions with the grass, a number of seats are placed within the lawns with stepping-stones leading to them.

Where the park meets the street a blurring of the edge occurs. The park paving continues out to the street, and the sidewalk paving continues into the park. This overlapping zone blurs the cultural framing of behaviour and thus creates opportunities for a greater variety of activities to emerge.

Two pavilions in the park are created using a relaxed assemblage of forms. The material and meta-pattern of the paving is applied to the walls of the buildings. The merging of floor and wall, and the contrasting colours and diagonal patterns of the surfaces, results in a camouflaging of the buildings. The building forms become difficult to distinguish and the buildings appear unlike buildings. Although designed and built at high speed, the buildings still lie dormant after sixteen months, their use undetermined. Various government departments continue to battle for the right to lease them.

Public artworks containing text remain only half built on the site, unfinished not because of the content of their text, but simply because they contained text. Without any form of intellectual appraisal the work was censored for fear of controversy. Our proposals to reinterpret the fondly remembered paraphernalia of the traffic park were likewise censored; perhaps because the government wanted to create the image of new gift to the people, not a second-hand one.

2024

Public Landscapes

Jiangyin

2023

Public

Education

Shanghai

Private Landscapes

2015

Nanjing

Playgrounds

2020

Suzhou

2000-2005

Structures & Pavillions

2019

Office

2005-2010

2021

Shenzhen

Culture

Planning

Hangzhou

Urban Design

Huai’an

Xi'an

Xinyu

2013

Retail

Hospitality

Mixed Use

Sports

Education

2018

Yixing

2017

Taizhou

Office

Culture

Retail

Melbourne

2016

2011

Residential

Infrastructure

Kyneton

Hotel

Hotel

Wuxi

Healthcare

2014

2012

Healthcare

Fuding

Shaoxing

Chongqing

Kunshan

Wuhan

Cixi

Ningbo

Meishan

Canberra

Jingzhou

Chengdu

Hospitality

1990-2000

Xiamen

Residential

Hopetoun

Caofeidian

100 Parks + One Eco Corridor:
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an excessive minimalism:
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more Piazza Navona than Levittown
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clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
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landscape, urbanity, networks, the suitcase, and the paper-bag:
BAU592 Qingpu Zhaoxiang Sports Park, Supermarket + Hotel

more than a frozen moment:
BAU659 ZOOM OASIS, Linkong Perimeter Super Block

look! up in the sky!
BAU210 Shanghai Hongxuan Office Building

Made in China, no question – Invented in China, of course:
BAU588 You-Du R+D Development, Jinqiao, Shanghai

a hybrid infrastructure:
BAU679 Yuandang Bridge

large plains, small grains, and the in-between:
BAU686 Longgang Arts Centre, Shenzhen

on reflection:
BAU674 Qingpu Performing Arts Centre

Place, typologies, programs, and public life:
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more than just a technopolis:
BAU206 Hangzhou Xiasha New City Centre

a second network embracing history, smalllness, and complexity:
BAU193 Chengdu West New District

a park for everyone and everyone in their park:
BAU189 Hongqiao Park

disorder – not randonmness but beyond order:
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mosaics of teaching, networks of learning:
BAU149 Huai’an Tertiary Education District

walled cities within a walled city:
BAU147 Xi’an High-Tech Precinct CBD

co-existence without incompatibility:
BAU138 Jiangxi Xinyu Networks City

space-time conflict:
BAU544 Shanghai University Campus

clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
BAU119 Jinqiao Sports & Leisure Centre

Journeys AND destination, not just destinations:
BAU569 Nanjing Youfu West Street Primary School

continuous loops and internal courts:
BAU603 Suzhou kindergarten no. 3

weaving and stitching:
BAU616 Jiangyin Greenway Loop (stage 1. Eastern Segment)

a constructed and cultured topography:
BAU269 Jindi Green Land Club

it takes a village to educate a child:
BAU602 Suzhou Sci-tech City Xizhu Kindergarten

city typologies, cultural traditions, contemporary theories, and spaceships:
BAU600 Shanghai Qingpu Newtown 30-class Primary School

artificial plateau:building more site:
BAU599 Shanghai Qingpu Newtown 24-Class Junior High school

it is the least we could do: minimalism in an environment of expressionism
BAU584 Hangzhou Tonglu Office Building

more Piazza Navona than Levittown
BAU618 Tianyou Experimental Primary School and Kindergarten, Suzhou

classrooms AND the in-between: teaching and learning beyond the classroom
BAU610 Taizhou School

other institutions for this new century:
BAU604 Qingpu District People’s Court

building the unfinished:
BAU003M The Victorian Pride Centre

minimal AND maximal:
BAU583 Exhibition Pavilion Gaochun, Nanjing

small in scale large in monumentality:
BAU027 Wyndham Mausoleum

multiple rooms of difference:
BAU253 Shanghai Qingpu Renheng Yunjie Entrance Garden

active cultural edges, passive natural centres:
BAU402 Shanghai Qingpu Qin Yuan Lake Park

intimate, cool, sheltered and lively:
BAU268 Xinqiao Commercial Street + Shop Housing

formal teaching and informal learning:
BAU540 Gaochun New District Kindergaten to Year Nine School

an exercise in robustness:
BAU333 Jiangyin Huifu Office Tower

effortless complexity: learning from water-town:
BAU222-2 Shanghai Qingpu Zhujiajiao Commercial

no longer but not only:
BAU213-3 Jindi Yunhu Market

actualizing the virtual:
BAU 213-2 Jindi Yunhu Sports and Activity Center

geometry, history, art, craft, iconography, and pragmatics: an exploration of intention, coding, narrative, and meaning
BAU021 Olinda Green + Public WC

there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in:
BAU015 Jan Juc House, Victoria, Australia

BAU009 house in the sky

surreal adjacencies:
BAU019 Marymount Residence, Guest Accommodation, Stable + Office

mini-city of culture:
BAU590 Nanjing Pukou Haiqiao Community Service Center

keeping a low profile:
BAU 214 Suzhou Qingshan Hotel Phase I

positive space, human scale, and a blue-green net:
BAU213-1 Jindi Yunhu Housing

dis-integrated guest houses :
BAU495 Pine Pillow Retreat

don’t look at me, don’t look at me:
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new buildings, old topography:
BAU424 Suzhou Qingshan Hotel Phase 2

defining the perimeter, programming the centre, inhabiting them both:
BAU238 Town Plaza, Xinqiao, Jiangyin

turning outside-in:
BAU199-2 Wuxi Fudi Forte Parktown Sales Pavilion

beyond PODS, networks, and nodes:
BAU552 Chengbei Urban Design project, Nanjing

podium and bill(ding)board:
BAU547 Nanjing Yaxi Town Central Hospital

inner sanctuary, outer crust:
BAU546 Nanjing Gaochun Qiqiao Hospital

an excessive minimalism:
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a plane of reference:
BAU474 Nanjing Zijin Gaochun Science and Technology City

rips in the fabric by place:
BAU461 Nanjing Tangshan Tourist Resort South District

other ideas of hospital:
BAU446 Fuding Hospital

architecture AND terrain:
BAU445 Suzhou Hi-tech District Cultural Center

crust: in-between and on the edge
BAU426 Shaoxing Jianhu Keyan Tourist Resort Planning

eco urbanism:
BAU425 Chongqing Eco Valley City

microcosm:
BAU348 Kunshan Hyper Complex

beyond the picturesque:
BAU347 Kunshan White Pagoda Park

don’t just re-use the typology, improve it!
BAU310 Hangzhou Changbanxiang Housing

building a community not just housing:
BAU302 Shanghai Ludi Baoshan

upside down program – ‘private’ circulation becoming ‘public’ circulation:
BAU254 Shanghai Wai Gao Qiao Culture Centre

extra-large private space as public space:
BAU199 Parktown, Housing, Fudi Forte, Wuxi

mini-me:
BAU197 Jindi Sanlin Pavilion

staggering:
BAU191 Wuhan Cuiwei Housing

urban camouflage:
BAU227 Hangzhou Sports Centre

the resort at the end of the yellow dirt road:
BAU543 Emerald Village at Soul Bay

critical regionalism and abstraction:
BAU487 Nanjing Yaxi Citta-Slow

hospital for the ill, health care for the healthy, aged care for the elderly: BAU469 Zhaoxiang Hospital

tear open the package: BAU247 Qingpu NGS Supermarket

urban sponge:
BAU324 Cixi Commercial and Culture Center

lyrical islands in pragmatic seas:
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fractured enormity:
BAU281 Chongqing Huarun

ring roads AND peripheral parks:
BAU243 Shanghai Ring Park

simple box OR 3 points in space – you choose:
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many utopias:
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a close family:
BAU125 Zhejiang Power Company HQ

stretching, squeezing, bending, trimming:
BAU550 Huanglong Xigu Urban Design

BOTH networks AND objects:
BAU497 Wyndham Cove Eco Sub-urb

ethics, democracy, difference:
BAU470 Towards a Socially Sustainable Canberra

warp and woof:
BAU460 Jingzhou Museum

sustainable technologies for clean living:
BAU396 Nanjing Residential

network of learning:
BAU341 Yushanwan School

not in galleries, but a way of seeing:
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shopping sandwich:
BAU321 Jiangyin Wuxing Commercial Centre

celebrating the collective, the intimate, the sustainable, and the local:
BAU312 Suzhou School

21st century Ponte Vecchio:
BAU287 Shanghai 2010 World Expo Bridge

antidote: not another ghetto city:
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at last …finally …some diversity:
BAU282 Jindi Sanlin Office

recycling and beyond
BAU264 Shanghai Jiashan Market

an assemblage of difference:
BAU256 Shanghai Hongqiao Performing Arts Center

streets as shelters, bars as amphitheaters, landscapes as playgrounds:
BAU235 Jinqiao Community Bars

reduce, reuse, recycle:
BAU220 Shanghai Sculpture Space

binary oppositions defining a field of operation – all we wanted was a park:
BAU122 Xiamen International Exhibition Centre

the hotel as microcosm of the city:
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…very strange:
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the beautiful and the extraordinary:
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a dynamic yet stable vehicle:
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palimpsest:
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innovation both inside and out:
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exquisite corpse
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landscape becomes urban design becomes architecture:
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BAU386 Symbiotic City

repetition and difference:
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no longer drowning – waving:
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yet another point of view:
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ordinary not heroic, symbolic not monumental:
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woven threads:
BAU234 Jiangyin Arbour Park

private precincts, public networks:
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creative networks:
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maximize commuication and cross fertilization:
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