For their latest master plan in Xinyang, WORD with SWA Group Los Angeles have developed a framework that responds to the town’s predicted swift population growth. As Chinese communities, such as Xinyang, begin to expand at rapid paces, the existing infrastructures must be re-thought and re-organized, as the demand for new development adds stress to the current systems. Working with a site measuring over 36 kilometers in length with varying topography – a mountainous region in the south to plains and plateaus to the north – the firms resorted to a solution “requiring calculated sensitivity and ingenuity” based on the region’s natural systems.
A great set of diagrams, and more information about the project after the break.
The team’s approach is grounded in the region’s natural systems, specifically that the provision of water quantity and quality to Xinyang would guide all major decisions. As a result, a series of seven “reaches,” each with their own adaptive morphology, are placed strategically in the city so as to both naturally and mechanically filter and route water through the master plan to support the districts, as well as to provide a leisure and entertainment resource.
“After quantifying available water supplies from nearby sources (a watershed, a massive transnational canal and filtered runoff from coal mines), sustainable consumptive populations and densities for each of the seven reaches were proposed,” explained the team.
“The master plan was created by reacting to, and sometimes as a reflection of, the differing systems of the site: natural formations, extant and projected population densities, circulation routes and usage districts.”
Project Credits:
Project Prime: SWA Group, Los Angeles
President: Gerdo Aquino
Managing Principal: Ying Yu Hung
Associate: Youngmin Kim
Team: Young-Joon Choi, Xiaoxuan Lu, Liz Lagedrost
WORD
President: Christopher Warren
Project Team: Ryan Ramirez, Lois Lee, David Villela, Danah Mangahis
Water Resources Engineering: LimnoTech
Rendering: Kilograph
