Chengdu is an extremely inclusive city. Chengdu people say there are two parallel worlds in Chengdu: one inside the third ring road, and the other in the southern High-tech Zone. One side is the vibrant life of Chengdu, enjoying the slow pace and old-fashioned flavor; the other side is the international trend, seeking the true meaning of life in struggle—one side of Chengdu is closer to "itself," and the other side is closer to the "world."

We draw inspiration from Chengdu's history, life, and the city itself, using more beautiful parks as a link between daily sentiments and a diverse city, fostering a wide range of scenarios and resonance, allowing the two parallel worlds of Chengdu to merge here. Here, roots and avant-garde consciousness coexist; regardless of age, a simple "Let's go for a walk in the park" always receives a positive response, and people relax in the park, putting their minds and bodies at ease. The park is the starting point of the design, and it is also the answer we provide.

City Design Plan

In regional research, we achieve "integration" and shoulder regional functions serving surrounding communities in the iterative development of the southern High-tech Zone. In spatial design, we achieve the integration of people and the city through "park dissolution."

Regional Integration: Towards Depth and Diversity

The Qilong area, which has risen with the development of TOD integrated development with subway transfers, has given the southern High-tech Zone the opportunity for in-depth structural development. However, we believe that "in-depth development" is not linear, and we do not only focus on the transmission of development momentum from streets (Tianfu Fifth Street), but also pay more attention to the penetration and driving force of parks on its "hinterland" space. At the same time, this will not only be a node for TOD integrated development, but also a diverse carrier for international industrial cooperation and international community services.

Aerial View of Tianfu Fifth Street

Park "Dissolution": Panoramic Park Experience

Chengdu, as a city, places great emphasis on the sense of experience in work and life. Chengdu people have richer daily sentiments in public spaces such as courtyards and alleys than citizens of other cities—Chengdu currently has more than 400 parks of various types; by 2035, 141 new comprehensive and specialized urban parks will be planned and constructed within the built-up area of the central urban area, with per capita park green space area no less than 16 square meters per person, and park green space service radius coverage rate no less than 95%... Citizens have many practical needs for the diversity of parks and the combination of park and urban functions.

Analysis Diagram of Daily Life Trajectories of Chengdu and Wuhan Citizens Based on Questionnaire Surveys

(Data source: Park City—Theoretical Exploration of a New Model of Urban Design, Sichuan People's Publishing House, page 295)

Investigation and Analysis Diagram of the Diversity and Complexity of Park Functions in Chengdu (Data source: April 2018 WeChat online questionnaire survey on park recreation needs of residents throughout the city conducted by the Chengdu Municipal Planning and Management Bureau, with 736 valid questionnaires)

We envision the integration of parks, cities, and residents, blurring the boundaries between work and life with parks. The future Qilong area will rely on parks to achieve multi-dimensional connections—the city is the park. On this basis, we will further expand the connotation of parks around Chengdu's traditional courtyard and alley culture. Future work, life, and entertainment will be wonderful in courtyards and linger in alleys—courtyards and alleys are also parks.

Therefore, in structural design, we "dissolve" the park into the matrix of the city, breaking the original control plan's "barcode-like" separation of production, life, and ecology:

(1) From the original road-based streets to park-based streets—achieving the liberation of street blocks.

(2) From the original park as a boundary to park as a center—achieving functional integration.

(3) From parks embedded in plots to parks stitching plots—achieving the activation of the city scene.

We organize the overall urban space around "parks," achieving a transformation from building parks in the city to building cities in parks, and from spatial construction to habitat experience creation, making it more "exciting," "green," "integrated," and unique.

Partial Aerial View

Integration of City and People: Diverse Scenario Design

"City" and "people" are the two core logics of this design. The park city provides a new possibility for the relationship between the two: through the "dissolution" of the park, we achieve the integration of "city" and "people," allowing the park city's "one public leading three lives" to truly fall into the green experience of human scale. In terms of "city" creation, we advocate for context-based design to create urban attractiveness, allowing people to feel that working and living here is a joyful experience. In terms of "people," we study people's needs, pay attention to people's experiences, and create a better life through diverse supply.

In the process of mutual "dissolution" between parks and blocks, space becomes interesting, experiences become diverse, and "city" and "people" achieve integration. We use a green landscape ribbon to connect the four major park scenarios representing "people, city, environment, and industry." Each park corresponds to a characteristic street and a type of complex, bringing a panoramic park experience.

Schematic Diagram of Panoramic Park Experience with Green Landscape Ribbon as the Core

• Immersive landscape green ribbon and panoramic park

Drawing inspiration from Chengdu's natural landscapes, the project recreates the unique charm of the Bashan and Shu waters through an integrated design system encompassing architecture and landscaping. It caters to the park's usage needs for diverse groups of people, throughout the day and across all seasons, creating a new, three-dimensional, healthy, interactive, ecological, and vibrant hotspot.

Panoramic park bird's-eye view of the entrance area

• Creative Park nestled among the stacked alleys of the ancient Shu Road

Inspired by the characteristic ancient Shu Road of the Bashu region, this project creates a multi-functional, vertically ecological, and vibrant courtyard-style commercial and office space, forming a three-dimensional stacked alley similar to the "Shu Road." It aims to provide a space for open interaction and innovation for creative enterprises. Simultaneously, using the cultural and creative complex as the core of the flow organization, it integrates display, commerce, leisure, and ecology. Employment and consumer groups can roam in the air, stroll through the three-dimensional park, and create diversity between creativity and nature.

Bird's-eye view of the Creative Park

• Lively Park surrounded by lush forests and mountains

Inspired by hills and low mountains, this design uses landscaping and multi-dimensional flow lines to create a shopping experience that immerses shoppers in nature, creating a lively park for the future Qilong area. The plan centers on "experience, cross-border, and wisdom," using innovative cross-border business models such as "exhibition + sales, research + sales, play + sales" to achieve green consumption upgrades that are suitable for innovation, consumption, and experience.

Bird's-eye view of the Lively Park

• Talent Park integrated into the charming courtyards of Chengdu

Centered around a talent complex, this project is rooted in the traditional courtyard houses and alleyways of Chengdu, integrating the park into the residential area to create a naturally pleasant, three-dimensional, open, and multi-dimensional community. The talent complex and balcony community are adjacent to the park, combined with various community businesses and public facilities to serve both talent and citizens, creating a comfortable, convenient, and borderless urban living circle.

Perspective view of the Talent Park

Park Integrated Complex

Interpreting the requirements of park city development with the concept of a "park-integrated complex," our design of each scenario and location adheres to a step-by-step process, from usage needs and functional business planning to the final spatial model, making this place more down-to-earth and vibrant.

The plan systematically sorts and regresses analyzes the location, personnel scale, office area, and rent of more than 230 cultural and creative enterprises in Chengdu. It finds that 80% of cultural and creative enterprises have fewer than 50 employees and less than 400 square meters of office space. Therefore, from the perspective of matching the development characteristics of cultural and creative enterprises, the spatial setting logic of the Qilong Innovation Park's cultural and creative enterprises is established, mainly focusing on small and medium-sized office needs, and paying attention to providing customized spatial supply innovation in terms of business types, services, and functions.

Analysis chart of the scale of small and medium-sized creative enterprises in Chengdu

Based on this, we focus on balancing the efficiency and experience of the innovation park. To adapt to the growing demand for innovation, we explore optimizing the supply of innovative office spaces in ten aspects, including learning spaces, health, and shared rest, advocating the MOBO fifth-generation office model ("M"-mobile information office, "O"-open and free office, "B"-one-stop business service office, "O"-garden oxygen office). Through contextualized office creation, we aim to build communities, attract talent, share resources, promote enterprise exchange and growth, break down the boundaries between leisure and work, improve employee efficiency, and inspire creative ideas.

Top Ten Future Office Trends

In terms of the layout of industrial space, the plan uses the Creative Park and the cultural and creative complex as the center and hub of the workspace, integrating display, commerce, leisure, and ecology. Low-density park-like spaces penetrate high-density office districts, allowing employment and consumer groups to roam in the air, stroll through three-dimensional parks, and create diversity between creativity and nature.

Schematic diagram of the layout of industrial functional spaces

(It is recommended to view the following image in landscape mode on a mobile phone)

Schematic diagram of "Shu Road Stacked Alleys"

Only by continuously attracting innovative talent to work and settle here can we inject sustained vitality into the future development of the Qilong area. The plan simultaneously considers the daily needs and lifestyles of both innovative talent and ordinary residents.

For innovative talent, the plan creates a sense of "community." By integrating a sunken plaza, supporting services, apartments, and rooftop gardens into the "talent complex," it meets the living habits and functional needs of talent. The talent complex also serves as a new type of residential model and a public hub for community flow organization, accommodating 15% of the employed population on-site.

For ordinary residents, the plan recreates a sense of "neighborhood" in the courtyards. Drawing on the "Sichuan West Linpan" residential model, we use courtyards as units to create a human-scale, shared sunlight and landscape balcony community. The inward-facing courtyards connect the first floor of the building with nature and the street, forming a living space that balances openness and privacy. Multi-layered three-dimensional gardens bring greenery into every household, and residents can enter their homes via elevated walkways, ensuring community openness while facilitating privacy management.

In shaping commercial vitality, the plan focuses on park-like commercial experiences, promoting the upgrading of traditional business models to green consumption. Through the Lively Park and multi-dimensional flow line design, it creates a shopping experience that immerses shoppers in hills and low mountains, extending the landscape interface to the city's waterfront to further activate the waterfront space. The composition of business types targets different age groups of consumers, focusing on creation and inspiration, experience and belonging, relaxation and enjoyment, family and life, providing customized future shopping methods.

Perspective view of the Lively Park waterfront space

In shaping the vitality of shared streets, the plan emphasizes a "one-board for people and vehicles" design. Through time-controlled traffic management, it restores road rights, making pedestrians the masters of the streets. During working hours, it focuses on the vitality of sidewalks and areas in front of buildings, strengthening public spaces through movable seats, park-style parking lot transformations, and tactical squares. Because shared streets have no curb height differences, curb extensions and movable flower beds are used to reduce vehicle speeds and ensure pedestrian safety. During leisure hours, the vitality of the entire street area is emphasized, and cars are prohibited from entering. Motor vehicle lanes are "occupied" by vendors, seats, and decorative art, becoming squares for pedestrian gatherings and activities.

Planning uses underground transportation "micro-circulation" to free up ground transportation. Motor vehicles and taxis are used for point-to-point passenger transport on the first underground level; the second underground level organizes freight services and parking loops, creating a separation of passengers and freight from the first underground level, and connecting to other transportation units, overall alleviating the pressure of ground traffic flow in and out.

Schematic diagram of underground flow lines in the urban block

Relying on various integrated complexes, a three-dimensional slow network is constructed that caters to both daily travel and recreational travel. Taking a cultural and creative complex as an example, the design integrates a sunken plaza + bus station + interaction node + three-dimensional park through reasonable design, which can achieve integrated bus and slow-traffic services, seamlessly connecting work, life and leisure functions, and serving as the core of various flow line organizations.

Schematic diagram of the three-dimensional slow traffic network

At the same time, the scheme combines the design of the portal area transfer station with the transfer square, connecting the subway and bus terminals. In the vertical design, the subway station, power corridor, river water system and main road underpass tunnels are coordinated to form a three-dimensional interconnected transfer network, integrating landmark buildings, sunken plazas, commercial supporting facilities, and park landscapes, creating an overall BMW complex ("B"-Bus, Bicycle, "M"-Metro, "W"-Walk), achieving a fusion of experience and efficiency, leading the green upgrade of TOD, making people willing to stay here, making it possible to "speed up and slow down".

Schematic diagram of the underground space in the portal area

Perspective view of the portal area

The planning is based on people's perception and experience of the city, adopting the "five-story building" guideline control approach, which includes underground (-1F, -2F), ground level, above ground (podium, tower) 5 levels, a total of 20 major and 36 minor control items, exploring a more three-dimensional and efficient way of urban block construction.

Among them, the ground floor element control is centered on slow traffic experience, constructing a human-centered spatial characteristic; the podium floor element control emphasizes the interface and connection between buildings and street walls, clearly depicting the order and structure of the street side interface; the tower floor element control focuses on building groups and appearance, shaping a demonstrative skyline and a three-dimensional space with unit characteristics; the first underground floor element control focuses on the vibrant underground space; and the second underground floor element control focuses on the organization of underground flow lines.

Schematic diagram of the three-dimensional urban block

Of particular importance is that, in order to ensure the hierarchical transmission of public businesses, public experiences, and public flow lines, we have established the following design control principles:

Identifying the bottom line of the public domain: Creating a sound public space system, strengthening the control and guidance of the relationship between urban blocks, interfaces, building groups, building heights, and environmental landscape facilities, shaping a high-quality spatial environment, and meeting citizens' basic needs for public space.

Combination of control and release: Distinguishing between "mandatory control content" and "guidance content", formulating appropriate control levels and models based on design priorities, public wishes, implementation conditions, and impact levels, ensuring the flexibility of control.

Public domain "one chessboard": The "five-story building" control is a classified expression of the control methods for spaces at various levels. In actual control, integrated management and integrated design should be implemented to ensure the organic connection and penetration of public domains at various levels.

Perspective view of the open public space

Parks, as the main body of the city, are also the carriers of Chengdu's unique sentiment. It is not so much that planning is designing the city, but rather that it is designing parks. Here, with ecological civilization as the guide, a "park-dissolved park complex" will be created, refocusing on the traditional yet innovative, leisurely yet exploratory, heavy yet youthful temperament of Chengdu; here, the voices of Chengdu's courtyards, alleys, and streets will also be listened to, and the creation of an innovative environment will be cherished. People's yearning for a better life will be reproduced in a park-like way, spanning history and the future, integrating tradition and innovation, making the city more ecological, more inclusive, and healthier.

Perspective view of the portal landmark building