Foreign leading firm MLA+ and local leading firm the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, in collaboration with Felixx Landscape Architects & Planners and the Shenzhen Municipal Design & Research Institute, have won first prize in the urban design competition for the regeneration of an area along the G107 highway in the Bao’an district of Shenzhen, China.
Located on both aspects of the G107, the one- to two-kilometer piece of land forms a 53-square-kilometer area for the new plan, which will redevelop a fragmented industrial landscape created by the highway and Shenzhen’s identity as a former “Factory of the World” city.
Thus, the proposed design utilizes the highway to connect varying areas, but changes the functions of these areas “from a utilitarian infrastructure into a key driver for urban regeneration.”
"An important element of our plan is that we try to connect the bigger regional scale with the local design scale. This ‘in-between-scale’ is in our view the most important driver for quality, but still unseen as such in China. Therefore, as European experts we can make an important contribution in this area in Chinese cities," noted Markus Appenzeller, partner at MLA+.
Other teams participating in the competition included Nikken Sekkei, KCAP, OMA, and ISA-Internationales Stadtbautelier.
An implementation plan for the project will arise within the coming three years.
News via MLA+.
