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Architects: VIASCAPE design
- Area: 140 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:CreatAR Images
Text description provided by the architects. The project is situated at the southeast side of the busy crossing of Caoxi Road and South Kaixuan Road, covering an area of 6300m2. The site was initially occupied by low-quality illegal building blocks and a car park. Ren'ai Hospital is to the west of the site, giving little setback from South Kaixuan road, and results in narrow access and poor spatial experience. The site is an elongated channel in between metro line 3 station in northeast tothe. The shadow cast by interwoven Metro line 3, Inner Ring and Huming Elevated Bridge makes the site an overcrowded grey mess.
At the beginning of 2022, Xuhui District Government initiated a comprehensive site regeneration project, including illegal building demolition and green space restoration. Having conducted multiple times of site surveys, we planned a pocket park at Caoxi Road and South Kaixuan Road cross. This park will incorporate conventional pedestrians into green space, improving the commuting experience along Caoxi Road/South Kaixuan Road and the way to the metro station Caoxi Road, and providing the necessary rest area. In this way, an open landscape and appropriate rest space are combined to create a shared green space with a sense of belonging for adjacent residential area like Jinguyuan and Hongrunhuayuan.
Caoxi Road pocket park is intended to be incorporated into the general Caoxi Road streetscape with a widely spread edge along South kaixuan Road. The design scheme primarily attempted to move the commuting pedestrian into the pocket park, giving a continuous green space with street trees at the street front. Therefore, the “park city” concept will be planted into the block which the pocket park locates, especially from a vehicular view and far-range pedestrian view. Secondly, a cross-linked Gingko tree matrix was conceived to weave 2 pedestrians with a width of 3 meters together, maximizing the commuting efficiency and providing recreation opportunities for users entering into the core area of Pocket Park.
Green dimension is a top concern in our design. The various classifications of landscape spaces and appropriate terrain organization in the design scheme provide an “image of public park” with the arrangement of neat green space at first glance for users. At the same time, the combination of various species of trees forms a wavy canopy profile, with the introduction of low-maintenance shrubs, shade-requiring ground covers, and perennials, an ecological pocket park is generated for the busy center area of Shanghai. Besides, the design scheme provides access to the pocket park for the residential community to the south. A semi-public/semi-private recreational place and the link to the interior space of the Breeze Gallery offer diverse spatial experiences for the local residents at a scale of the community garden, which is enclosed with green space and landscape structure.
Started from the first site visit in the Chinese New Year of 2022, rounds of investigation and design studies were conducted until March of 2022. The real in-depth design was finalized during Covid-19 quarantine from April 2022 to May 2022. The disordered status of the site was like the low spirit at the time, urgently awaited being healed by the "breeze" and expected a smooth spatial flow after unblocking the long-term congestions at the site. The shape of "breeze" was conceived with transformations based on "four scales", at the site, unfolding terrain from north to south. We then defined the design concept as "Shaping with the Breeze", hoping the pocket park could achieve the goal of "healing cities, activating neighborhood, sharing the life of park city".
The overall design with the breeze as a physical symbol is achieved with a series of paralleled and interlinked lines flowing continuously, which also guides the user’s function. This not only serves as a graphic base for the typology of pedestrian space and Gingko trees matrix, but also blends the pedestrian space into the core green area of the pocket park. Viewed from the surrounding high-rise and office block, the fabric of Caoxi Road Pocket Park at the street front side is seamlessly merged into the texture of metro line 3.
The size of pocket parks in the central area of a megacity is normally rather small, the architecture surrounding with trees will be more impressive than other types of spatial elements in pocket parks. The visual image of the "Breeze Gallery" appears to be outstanding due to the shallow south-north depth of the site.
Strategically, "breeze-shaped" linear language is utilized to organize the floor plan for the "Breeze Gallery". A big percentage of grey space is defined as the core area. A "gallery" shape structure offers a rest area with a canopy for users. The solid part at the west is relatively small, serving as an administrative center and MEP room. A bigger space at the east is saved for public reading and community-shared space for citizens. Physically, the idea of “Breeze Blowing” is realized to create an overall spatial experience, making the grey space more recognizable and spatially flavorful. A "seating landscape" is also generated with the interior and exterior spaces of the gallery. Besides, the gallery bears structural significance for the whole pocket park, which to the north is more open to the city as a city park, while to the south is more a quiet community garden with a green landscape.
The "Breeze Gallery" is not only a carrier for recreational functions and public service, but also an expressive design work which combines void and solidness to achieve the dividing and merging of multiple layers of spaces. The "Breeze Gallery" is a most prominent structural landscape element of Caoxi Road pocket park.
