Project Name: CHENGDU TUOJIANG RIVER PARK
Location: CHENGDU, CHINA
Client: Chengdu Beikong Shundu Investment Group Co. Ltd.
Landscape Architect: Jessica Leete
Year Designed: 2013

Cultivating the land and life from the ground up, our design incorporates the local history of diverting water and of agriculture integrated with technological advances, in effect cultivating and maintaining rich agricultural soil in an urban ecology. The Canal is part of a much larger network. The park and ecological corridor along the canal connect the city through an extensive network—a green spine for urban life. Adjacent and linked properties are activated in economic, cultural, and environmental ways. The project design incorporates cultural, natural and modern aesthetics by melding visual metaphor, ecological succession, agriculture techniques and ground cultivation to create a wide variety of spatial experiences, individual and collective stories of movement through the landscape. The elements of the park and ecological corridor create a common identity using consistent signage, lighting, guard rails, shade canopies, and structures throughout the canal system.

Sustainable design enhances the local ecology, accentuates unique Chengdu culture, and creates an art form of public space to enrich the visual memory of Chengdu. Concentration of all the senses through the environment allows for an experience of awe in the landscape and draws from the source of the collective integrated memory. Cities are overlapping lives in succession; someone came before and someone will come after.