NAUTA Architecture & Research, in collaboration with P.B.A. Architectural Design Ltd. shared with us their design for the Yunlong Digital and Technology Park. Sustainability in a fast urbanization calls for simplicity, sobriety, pragmatism and elegance. The most efficient way to emerge in a screaming parade is silence. The design for the business park provides R&D offices and facilities for innovation industry, which focuses on mid-high level of the market. More images and architects’ description after the break.
This project is driven by the intention to integrate the cities of Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan into one urban region. Furthermore it should respect the National vision that aims to develop this region as a testing zone of ‘Resource-saving and Environmentally friendly development’. Therefore, this project has the ambition to explore a sustainable model to develop a business park, which could guarantee a long-term payback for the investors in terms of economy, social and environmental development.
The focus of urbanization in China is shifting from the coastal regions to the inland. The Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan (CZT) Region turns to be a hot spot, subject to enormous urban transformation and expansion, which get support by the national policy since 2006. This growth is based on a strong external infrastructural network that includes the high speed train and highway connection to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Thus this region holds the best opportunity of urban development in the coming decade. Since 2007, this region has proved to be a testing zone of ‘Resource-saving and Environmentally friendly development’ by the State Council.
The three cities originally connected by the Xiangjiang River are now integrating into one urban area. The urban form is turning into a ‘City Loop’, with an ecological ‘Green Heart’ in the middle. This regional integration strategy is implemented upon a very strong infrastructural network, connecting the main cities within the region to the rest of the country.
The location of this project is very strategic. On the fore hand, it locates in the central networks of CZT region. It is connected to the regional Huanghua airport and high speed train station with a distance of 15-20min by car. In addition, the highway to Shanghai goes across at the south of the site. The connectivity implies enormous advantage for business oriented development. On the other hand, the site is surrounded by the protected ecological ‘Green Heart’. On the global scale, where new park developments occur, working/living spaces in high quality natural environment turn to be the essential condition to attract the users and investors. On the regional scale the challenge of this project is to generate a maximum commercial value of the park from the potentiality of connectivity and landscape.
Growing towards a ‘City Loop’, Zhuzhou is extending its urban area along two new wings, among which Yun Long New Town (as well the site) is located in the northeast one. Because of its proximity to the airport, Yun Long New Town has strong competitiveness for the new business development which has ambition at the national scale, while the other New Town in the southwest owns the advantage of the local market.
According to the new urban regulations, the central area of the new Yung Long town where this business park project is located, appears as the centre of the new development on the urban scale. This portion of the master plan shows how it will programmatically link the new extension to the consolidated city centre of Zhuzhou, yet creating a new functional centre for the satellite city. The program portrays a multifunctional/business oriented heart that will centralize the activities, becoming the new city centre for the adjoining areas, respectively leisure/tourism epicenter and administrative/logistic epicenter. In this network of macro-areas within the new town, the central cluster plays an epicenter role, being heart between the Institutional development to the south and the north Leisure pole. For this reason it is possible to portray a leading role of this central cluster, giving attention to its multifunctional vocation.
The overall concept proposes the definition of a central park, capable to inject in the master plan a natural atmosphere, yet become a catalyst for all daily activities and flows connecting business and living clusters. The central park becomes as well the design tool to define a variable skyline of the master plan, capable to dilute as much as possible the traditional Chinese zoning into a more vibrant urban rhythm. The predominant office typology is softened by the study of more office building typologies. From small office headquarters villas, to courtyard rental offices, to sculptural towers rising on commercial plinths, the architecture of the park aims to improve at all times the quality of the public space and reduce the rigid urban code. Sober architectures and synthesis in the use of construction materials wills to simplify the relationship between architecture and nature, trying to focus on the predominance of green. In fact, all public buildings engage a physical dialogue with the park, either by extending it on their roof-tops or by sinking in the ground, or being covered by water basins that make those buildings seamless in the context. Sustainability is achieved by maximizing green solutions and recycling of water for services. Solar energy collected by natural roofs plays as well a role in the overall ecological strategy.
All developments phases engage the construction of a portion of the multifunctional program, in order to reduce in every phase the “satellite city” effect. In order to avoid the monotonous pattern of housing towers, dictated by a rigid urban code that allows little space to variations of orientation, we hybridize the towers into slabs with variable profiles, memory of a city block skyline. Once more the public space benefits of a more clear relation between objects and less resulting spaces.
Yun Long digital and technology park aims to offer smart solutions for a new sustainable Chinese urbanism in which sobriety and uniformity become signs of new architectural ambition and responsibility.
Architects: NAUTA Architecture & Research Location: Yun Long New Town, Zhuzhou, China Project Team: Maurizio Scarciglia, architect – project manager; Feile Cao, architect; Alessandro Capello, architect; Antonio Silva Caparrós, architect; Catalina García Trujillo, architect; David de Cos Roman, assistant architect Time: January-April 2011 Program: 45ha master plan with offices, social housing, luxury housing, congress centre, kinder garden, cine multiplex, hotel, retail, park
