Changshan Eastern City

In general terms, the urban structure is based on hierarchy and identity. Between the different quarters, landscape-designed areas are creating a visual and physical connection, so that citizens can benefit from green recreation areas and the riverside.
The arrangement of blocks makes a spatial partition of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Spheres of different privacy are defined, and high-quality green areas are provided for the adjacent buildings. Major quality of the development is its sophisticated assignment of ‘public’, ‘semi-public’ and ‘private’ areas which is a crucial feature for the success of a city.
The building heights descend from the Northern main road to the areas close to the riverside, paying respect to the buildings of the old town along the opposite river line.

The mixed-use Core Area serves as bridge-head connecting to the old town, across the river. A cluster of several high-rise office buildings are going to shape a significant sub-center of the entire area. Mixed-use functions that make cities attractive in their day-and-night-rhythm are located here. Due to its modular structure, the Core Area is flexible to react to modified requirements on the timetable of development.
In the centre of the development, serving as a landmark, a little commercial village surrounding a small harbour creates the main attraction. The village – including a high-rise hotel with conference and service facilities – is directly orientated towards the waterfront and enhances the leisure-time atmosphere. Footpaths into the development area and natural hiking paths along the river and green areas will emphasize this area as focal point. To enable pedestrians a carefree and secure street-crossing, a vantage platform as bridge leads from the second level of the commercial village to the riverside with café and restaurant at its end.

The urban structure of residential and landscaped areas create a well-balanced spatial concept with multifaceted relations, links and interfaces. In this decentralized concept, the residential quarters create a livable environment that follows the aim of clearly defined neighbourhoods. Each neighbourhood serves the daily needs of its residents by an adapted offer of shops, retail, services and socio-cultural facilities. The general idea is a city of short distances, which creates a surplus for certain user-groups and assures a vital environment and specific identity for each quarter.

Tianjin Sino-Singapore Eco City

Backbone and main identifying element of Tianjin Eco City is the so-called “Eco-Valley”.
Below this continuous green corridor of 12 km length, a new subway line will connect the districts and the centre of this new city for 350.000 people.
The figure of the Eco-Valley in its general shape is defined by its scenic situation near the river, following the curve of the old Ji canal, as well as by the interpretation of this situation by the master plan.
The double intersection of the Eco-Valley and the canal forms a natural inner core with a unique character. The isthmus area which is formed between the two water courses is reserved for research, conferences and exhibitions. In its north and south two areas of contrasting character are located.
The urban structure of this central bone differs in scale and shape from the surrounding urban texture. The core area is set off from the surrounding corpus of the city by clearly defined building flights and a surrounding green cordon.

Dongli Lake CBD

Maintaining stability and durability of the overall planning while being flexible to implement a diversified architecture, is the key to every sustainable urban planning.
More than that, a sound urban design is able to shape a bigger image that echoes the remembrance of other cities in the world: The Central Plaza with its radial street system can make people envisage ‘Potsdamer Platz’ in Berlin with its combined performance of contemporary architecture. The echoing between landmark buildings and landscape axis reminds of powerful spatial gestures like ‘La Défense’ or ‘Champs Élysées’ in Paris. The planned large-scale glazed shopping arcades will remind people of the vivid ‘Galleria Vittorio Emanuele’ in Milan.
But the urban planning recalls as well images of Tianjin with its own unique cityscape. The pleasant pedestrian and business spaces along the river evoke the charming city quarters between Haihe River and Race Course Road. At the same time, Dongli Lake CBD is equipped with its own unmistakable features – functional, pragmatic and poetic ones.

The planning area is divided into 3 parts: Two business areas north and south-west of the watercourse, as well as a central Cultural & Administration Area between those two. These three main plots consist of different secondary plots with multiple connections, shaping a graduated hierarchy with corresponding landmark buildings.
Waterfront towers are forming the corporate image of the whole district with a powerful skyline of high-end offices, hotels and business facilities. Landmark buildings in the river-bend area, overseeing and protecting the whole district, will create a visual name card for both Eastern and Western Lake.
The central plot with its mix of culture, entertainment and leisure accommodates the district’s Administration Centre, Museum, Music Hall, Theatre and various recreational facilities close to the lakeshore. Curved buildings embedded in an organic landscape transport the idea of communication and culture. In the northwestern tip of the site, a unique studio building can host outdoor music festivals as cultural brand of the entire Lake District. The audience can directly view the floating stage on the lake, with the landscape as natural stage setting.

The existing water landscape has been developed; additional landscape features have been integrated, focusing on sports functions, meditation and recreation. People will enjoy an exciting mix of green relaxation and dynamic recreation, and experience agreeable lakeshore promenades and splendid riverside environments.
Two landscape axes are forming a unique double corridor that makes full use of the most attractive places as well as the wetland system between lakefront and riverside. A carefully designed landscape bridge with various shapes is crossing the district diagonally and connecting various transportation nodes. Each intersection opens views to multi-layered courtyards, view axes and landmark buildings.

King Abdullah Island

Through its nature and the type and scale of the proposed activities, PT is a unique development project on both kingdom and Arabian Gulf levels.
To achieve its objectives, PT aims to be a major IT hub and offshore R&D and financial centre in the area. Moreover, it includes two major infrastructure components:

King Abdullah’s Bridge (with 11 km length) will connect King Abdullah’s Road in Dammam with Riyadh Road on the adjacent Tarut Island, thus formulating a ring road around the built-up area. This measure will finally improve the accessibility and connectivity between the different parts of the study area. It is planned to extend this bridge for another 14 km to Ras Tanura in the second stage of the project.
King Abdullah’s Passenger Port will improve the connectivity of Dammam with major urban centres on the Arabian Gulf and act as a peer to Jeddah Port in the Western area of the Kingdom. It is planned for 1.5 million passengers per year in its first stage and to be connected to South-East Asia, mainly India and Pakistan, in the second stage.

Wenzhou Taishun Movie Town

Major target of the concept is the movie industry in a comprehensive functional chain, i.e. from the shooting to the public release of a movie, integrating to some extent tourism and real estate development. A mix of film-shooting, movie tourism, event culture, leisure and entertainment as well as high-end wellness and vacation is the aim. Eventually, the project will create a real new town in the region, for a more or less permanent population of at least 40,000 inhabitants.

The Central Area of the movie town is the pivot of the entire project operation and development. It is the dense and busy focus, with starred hotels and serviced apartments, with commercial and entertainment streets and – above all – a themed plaza in its middle with a fascinating amalgam of facilities for public events, as unique and memorable landmark. Moreover the Central Area provides commercial trading and operation for up- and downstream industries of the movie production chain.

4 themed development areas encircling the Central Area serve as carrier of movie culture and tourism: Coming from the ‘Tourist Service Center’ as initial point, visitors will firstly explore the European-style ‘Western Movie Town’ starting with a typical European square and special features of Western architecture. Further in the east, the new Film University for about 7,000 students will serve for education and for film-shooting as well.

The ‘Republican Theme Movie Town’ will create an image of the early days of the Republic of China during the 1920s and 1930s, in historical settings of mainly Old Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The ‘Ming/Qing Theme Movie Town’ will focus on the architectural and street style of Ming and Qing dynasties, including Chinese classical gardens. Finally the ‘Song Theme Movie Town’ takes its inspiration from the famous painting of a ‘Riverside Scene of Pure Brightness’, making water become its main subject.

Each area combines film-shooting and tourism, with separate entrances and without disrupting each other. Each provides a ‘one-stop’ functional area for movie production, including conventional studios and open areas for mass-scene shooting. The shooting locations are sensitively integrated into the existing landscape and old-established villages.

The concentric arrangement of the urban structure is a direct result of the development strategy: Like the pieces of a cake, every construction stage should comprise a part of the commercial areas in the centre, a part of the encircling movie towns and a part of other investments.

Taiyuan South Station District

Every railway station is at the same time central and initial point of urban development and representative name card of the city for incoming passengers. RhineScheme’s comprehensive approach was to create an urban district with outstanding appearance, which nonetheless creates a smooth and continuous link with the surrounding urban patterns.

Several urban elements have been developed and integrated into an overall urban fabric:

Firstly the railway station itself serves as main linkage within the urban structure. Facing south-west and north-east, its two plazas are equipped with suitable uses for the surrounding areas. The planning makes them memorable elements by showcasing a corporate image of the city in appropriate scale. Beside the two main plazas, a variety of smaller squares for urban life and public exchange are located in commercial and mixed-use areas around the station. One major goal was to enable a pedestrian walkthrough with few disturbances and short distances.

The ‘Green Spine’ – beside station and plazas – is the third landmark to create a unique urban appearance with its sequence of high-rise buildings placed in an organic landscape with rich topography. Open from and towards the railway station side, it offers various integrated shopping facilities. More closed and covered by plants from the city side, it serves as noise buffer for the elevated highway. The ‘Green Spine’ will be experienced as a vivid promenade within a pearl-string of office towers, shops, bars, restaurants and leisure facilities. It is attractor and destination for the whole district.

Close to the railway station, mixed-use quarters serve as top address for companies’ headquarters, offices,   service facilities, medical practices, consultants’ premises, restaurants and cafés. Each quarter has its own public area with commercial facilities and is directly connected to leisure and sports facilities along the railway line. Housing areas are forming the second basic pattern with a refined mixture of public areas with central facilities and green recreational parks.

Due to the complex traffic hub on different levels, the dense city functions and the sheer amount of citizens, the area will be burdened by heavy vehicle traffic. More than the number or size of street lanes, their optimized connections are precondition for a smooth traffic flow. An effective traffic management system will focus the traffic flow to few main roads, while the remaining road network is only determined by local traffic. A circular traffic concept connects the inner traffic with the traffic systems of all development areas and further with the superior transportation network.

 

Caofeidian Eco City

A sequence of plazas and a series of 60-100m tall towers make the backbone clearly visible from afar. The promenade contains several ecological stepping-stones for recreation and storm water retention.

These urban pocket parks provide a niche for residents as well as for flora and fauna in the urban setting and help balancing the local climate.

Starting from this central area, the density decreases in direction to the canals in the east and west. The closed blocks with commercial and SOHO functions transform into more open residential patterns of smaller scale.

Parks with a natural shoreline and high biodiversity along the canals create a comfortable environment for the adjacent residential areas. Paths along the riverbanks, platforms reaching into the water and thematic gardens invite to recreational activities.

 To the south, the pedestrian promenade forks to the South Bank Park in one direction, and to the Sunrise Plaza of the eastern districts in the other direction.

The South Bank Park is a sheltered leisure beach park for residents and visitors. The park is lowered and has a protected water-body, which people can use for recreation such as kayaking. The south shore with its extensive natural areas can also accommodate cleansing biotopes to provide an excellent water quality within the so-called inner harbor basin.

Sport fields and lawns as well as a water stage add additional room for leisure.

The southern waterfront is set on a car-free island. Here piers, jetties and seating steps to the water and restaurants, hotels, commerce and leisure activities create a vibrant and maritime atmosphere.

The use of renewable energies, storm water management, priority for pedestrians and cyclists, efficient public transport systems, smart parking solutions and a car-reduced or car-free environment wherever possible are amongst the sustainable city objectives that will be implemented with the realization of this eco-water-city.

Qinghua Garden Residential Community

Principle of the urban layout has been to provide every residential building with good views to the landscape/lake and the forest. Furthermore vast open space areas have been created, which are completely undisturbed by car traffic.

In a smaller scale, special attention has been paid to the apartment layout. The building depth is mostly only 10m, allowing the flats to have a maximum of natural lighting. A majority of the apartments have triple orientation and natural ventilation for all rooms.
The façades draw their image from the surrounding trees with their different vegetation densities, allowing sunlight to pass through or to create shadows. This idea is also reflected in a colour scheme which mainly uses green tones as well as in the principle of a ‘second skin’:
The interior façade of the buildings is made of concrete and glass. Separated with a distance of about 20 cm from the wall and attached to it by a metal anchorage, a second skin made of wooden shutters protects the apartments from too much sun exposure. The shutters can be moved by the residents according to their needs, thereby creating a random and lively façade pattern.

The roofs of the buildings also perform as additional garden and can be used as a safe playground for children, partly as semi-public terrace with great views for all occupants, partly as a private roof garden for the top duplex apartments.
Light structure ‚bridges’ between the low-rise buildings are serving as extension space of the adjacent apartments and emphasize as gates the 4 pedestrian corridors in north-south direction.

A special characteristic of this urban planning scheme is its mixture between 4, 6 and 11 level apartment buildings and townhouses. High-rises are not concentrated in one area, but split into smaller clusters, each of them marked by a lake and interconnected with the others by a watercourse.

P.S.: The final realization of the project followed a completely different design language and is consequently shown as separate project in this website.

Weihai Xiaoyao Tourist Town

These elements also define the functional distribution and desired atmosphere: to the west, proximity to the water determines the active, leisure and entertainment pole; to the east, proximity to the forest park the more quiet, calm and private area for residences.
In both cases, water and forest are brought into the site in a dramatic way to increase direct contact with the waterfront and the park, for better commercial performance.
The more active western area is itself divided into an area dedicated to leisure, hotels and restaurants to the north, with a closer relationship to the water and the highest point, and a commercial retail area to the south, towards the city and integrating with the urban fabric.

From the present conditions of the site, the existing village gives us a wise and proven way of settling into the terrain, reflected in the street grid and basic orientation. These have been considered in the circulation structure of the master plans.
The surrounding region of Jiaodong provides us with the most valuable architectural resource: the stone-and-seaweed house, arranged mostly in courtyards that protect from the wind.
These elements also determine the master plan designs.

Master plan 1
The stone-and-seaweed house is faithfully rebuilt and recreated in the main buildings of the town: hotels and museum. They form a commercial village, preserving the scale and atmosphere of the old fishing towns. Finally, they provide an intense living experience for the dwellers of the residential area, in close contact with the noble traditional materials and the courtyard way of living.

Master plan 2
follows the same spatial structure but with a modern architectural language inspired by the shapes of the stone houses. In the commercial village, the central courtyards have been replaced by a dynamic and organic succession of public spaces. The residences still preserve the courtyard structure and density of construction while using contemporary materials.

Both master plans include a 5 star hotel, a museum focused on the cultural and architectural values of the region, a commercial center with mixed retail, a bar street and a ring of seafood restaurants surrounding a series of cascading lagoons ending in a water theatre, a potential venue for a “Weihai Impressions” open air show, the main attraction of the site which tells old local stories and legends such as ‘Xiaoyao Town’ and ‘Ever Bright City’. In addition, a residential area with a mix of housing types, from 160 m2 to 300 m2, all offering the experience of living in a modern interpretation of the traditional local house type.

Fuyang Wangdian German Town

The project aims at a symbiosis of German and Chinese urban culture: by harmonious relations between built and natural environment, by generous plazas and green areas and intimate little squares and alleys. The program includes residential towers as well as low-rise town houses, convenient shopping areas in the style of German old towns, a representative district plaza surrounded by cultural buildings, and a flexible open space for different activities such as “Oktoberfest” and horse show venues.

The ‘German Town’-inspired commercial area incorporates a 5 star business hotel facing its central square in the typical size of an ancient European town. Its counterpart, the half-open and large-scale urban plaza is located just opposite of the future district civic centre, to emphasize a formal urban axis which continues further west: with a brewery exhibition and research museum and different show venues.
This north-western area is designed around an open space for equestrian shows and other related sporting activities. A club house, grandstands and the main Oktoberfest tents are encompassing a green field in their middle.
The western end offers a restaurant and bar street, with a central festival tent for entertainment shows or exhibitions.

The residential areas reflect the importance of open space planning in today’s urban life.
Big-scale landscaped green areas are a must to find balance with our natural environment and give back what is taken from nature by any new development.
Wide green belts protect the quiet residential areas from the noisy traffic of the main roads.
The vast open space in which the residential areas are embedded provides all the benefits of recreation, ecology and natural aesthetics – as necessary surplus values for citizens. Each residential plot has its own central park, with a variety of water features, allowing residents to enjoy a green environment for leisure and sport activities.
An extensive parkway interconnects the green areas with their different identities and provides a panoramic landscape experience along its winded course.