DELINEATOR Awarded 2020 Texas Chapter ASLA Honor and Merit Awards
DELINEATOR was awarded a 2020 Honor Award for Zhengzhou Nature + Exhibition Center and a 2020 Merit Award for Kunming Tower Park by the Texas Chapter of The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). The luncheon for the award ceremony has been re-scheduled to August 8, 2020 in San Antonio Texas at the ASLA State Conference. Visit our projects page to learn more about these award-winning design collaborations.
“These winners represent outstanding examples of projects that contribute to the quality of life for all citizens of Texas, plus exceptional projects located outside of the state that were executed by Texas Chapter Members.” -TXASLA
The Zhengzhou Nature and Exhibition Center is a project designed to provide citizens an opportunity to connect with nature and provide relief from the intensity of urban China. The landscape design integrates the building program with the landscape to achieve this goal through carefully seating the building into a constructed hillside made up of wetland terraces that purify water to maintain a habitat pond. The historic landscape uses are referenced in the agricultural and informal riparian forest plantings that embrace and protect the project site from the rapidly developing urban context.
Kunming Tower Park is an urban multi-tower development that integrates adjacent public open space to create a multi-level urban landscape and public plaza. The integrated site and architectural design proposes multiple connections such as pedestrian sky bridges to connect public park spaces to the towers and central plaza. This pedestrian “thread” weaves through the heart of the development both above and below the ground level of the tower to negotiate the needs of residents of the tower, hotel guests, and corporate employees. The landscape architectural team collaborated closely with the architect and consultant group through rapid design iteration to develop the integrated proposal.
See below for full narratives of the projects and click on the images to see the full project page.
Zhengzhou Nature + Exhibition Center
Zhengzhou, China
In Collaboration with Callison-RTKL (Architect)
Context and Need
The Zhengzhou Nature and Exhibition Center will be a cultural and recreational amenity for a rapidly urbanizing new part of the city. In response to the project siting along a planned reservoir and the context of the newly developed city neighborhood, the City government desires for the building program to connect people to nature and embody the Chinese idea of the harmonious existence of people and nature.
The architectural response created an opportunity for an Audubon-like Nature Center with additional opportunities for cultural exhibitions and a viewing deck. The ring-shaped viewing deck connects the various building programs and extends the form into the landscape to provide more opportunities to experience the created natural context in a variety of ways. The ring form symbolizes harmony; therefore, the architectural and site design vision seeks to maximize the sense of integration between the building and the constructed landscape to fully and coherently represent the connection and coexistence of people and nature.
Constraints and Process
Zhengzhou is a major city in the Central agricultural heartland of China along the Yellow River. Because of the extent of water diverted for agricultural uses in this part of the country, there are freshwater shortages of both surface and ground water to the degree that the Yellow River often runs dry before ever reaching the Pacific Ocean.
The reservoir adjacent to the Nature Center is expected to have a limited constant flow that will largely be made up of urban runoff and treated wastewater with a water level that varies by up to eight meters. This provides limited opportunity for creating habitat for birds and especially waterfowl because the varying water level will not allow for the establishment of wetland plants that they rely on for protection, nesting, or feeding. Therefore, the site design for the Nature Center provides a constant-level pond for the creation of marsh, marginal, and open water habitat to expand the diversity of flora and fauna experienced in the park.
In order to create the habitat pond, water will be pumped from the adjacent reservoir, but due to the level of water scarcity in the region it will likely be highly polluted and require cleansing before being suitable for ideal habitat and ecological use. The landscape design uses a system of different types of constructed wetlands constructed in series to provide a more comprehensive filtration of a variety of different pollutants common in urban watersheds in China.
Design Solution
The overall landscape design for the Zhengzhou Nature and Exhibition Center seeks to integrate the design of the building and site in such a way that it connects people to the context of the constructed nature and reinforces the idea of the harmonious coexistence of people and nature. The design integrates the site and building by carefully depressing the building into the landscape so that the main entry from the plaza drop-off is five meters higher than the lower exhibition plaza that exits from the opposite and connects to a reflection pool situated below the viewing ring. The hillside is meticulously terraced with constructed wetland cells so that water pumped from the reservoir enters the top cell and feeds continuously through the system by gravity. It then exits the wetland system and flows into the reflecting pool adjacent to the building and plaza where the water takes on an architectural expression before cascading over the stone blocks that represent the fragmenting of the building form into the landscape. The cascade allows park patrons to experience the water in a dynamic way and incorporates air into the purified water before it enters the constant-level habitat pond. The edges of the pond and water edge at the reservoir are a further fragmentation and abstraction of the rectilinear volumes of the building extending out into the site. As the pond continues to fill from the reflecting pool and wetlands, it finally overflows back into the reservoir from which it was pumped in a substantially purer form.
The constructed wetland terraces that frame the building are enveloped in an informal forest of deciduous and understory trees that provide perforations in the canopy to allow for required light levels for the wetland species. The terraces also create the framework for a web of trail connections to a large ring promenade that connects the upper entry level of the building all the way to the reservoir water edge. The voids created in the forest by the terraces provide users an opportunity to engage with the water in different ways such as cascades and open water ponds. These spaces allow users to commune with this constructed nature in various ways and levels of activity or intensity that suit them most.
The historic agricultural land use of the site is represented in the new design through the orchard-style plantings of various ornamental, fruit, and nut trees enclosing the project site and buffering the interior from the intensive urban uses at the perimeter. Other previous landscape types are incorporated throughout the design such as the riparian forest that formerly existed along the creek alignment now used by the reservoir.
The design of the Zhengzhou Nature and Exhibition Center landscape uses water as a life-giving element that is used to animate both programmatically and ecologically. The constructed landscape will create diverse, engaging, and significant opportunities for residents and visitors to connect with and exist alongside a reconstructed nature harmoniously within the new urban fabric.
Kunming Tower Park
Kunming, China
In Collaboration with Callison-RTKL (Architect)
The site for the Client’s headquarters is located on axis with the city government district and adjacent to the University District of Kunming. This location is considered to be the most prime development parcel available in this new city center of Kunming because of the inherently iconic skyline opportunity and the proximity to a quality employment base. The nearby South Kunming Station provides a vital tourism connection and adjacent residential communities surrounding the center of the neighborhood provide resources for attracting and maintaining growth. The landscape team researched and analyzed these various urban current conditions and opportunities as well as studied historical aerial imagery.
Rapidly expanding urban growth in this new city district has created a lack of open space and significantly reduced farmland. These changes have significantly altered the connection of citizens of Kunming to their surrounding natural context.
Kunming is famous for its exceptional climate, vegetation and spring-time color. It is known as the City of Eternal Spring because of its especially temperate year-round weather. The landscape design team relied heavily on previous personal experience of Kunming to celebrate the native and adaptive planting palette as well as the spirit of the successful and populated parks and open spaces of the city. This first-hand knowledge was useful in developing programming for the site and adjacent public spaces.
Initial Critical Coordination and Collaboration
The landscape design team worked closely with the architect and environmental consultant to integrate open-air spaces at multiple levels in the tower, at-grade and below grade. The initial challenge was addressing the project requirement: creating a world-class high-rise headquarters for the Client that had 3 distinctive uses: residential, office, and hotel with circulation and entries separated for each use on a tight site footprint. The architectural team’s initial circulation and ground level building programming significantly evolved to incorporate more site integration after multiple work sessions with the landscape architectural design team. This early coordination allowed the architectural design to maximize engagement with the site through developing circulation at multiple levels.
Pushing the Boundary
The original scope of the project was limited to the central parcel shown in the plan diagrams of the site. The landscape architectural team presented several conceptual opportunities very early on to the architects for the Client to maximize their revenue and success by utilizing adjacent open space parcels. The response from the Client was positive and the group was asked to continue their efforts on the design proposal including the parcels beyond the original scope.
Creating a Public Thread
The public thread is a pedestrian spine that winds through the site and into the connecting open space and urban landscape. The public thread connects the community to the private development space and allows for enhanced public life while also encouraging retail access and use. As a spine for the development, the thread acts as the connective tissue for small scale recreational activities that flow through the adjacent public open space. The goal is to use the landscape to highlight the connections through and into the tower and retail below physically and visually. There is a harmony between urban life and nature that pulls people from different levels into the tower.
Connectivity and Activation
The central plaza site at the base of the towers acts as a flexible dual function drivable plaza providing an open and welcoming pedestrian space for the public. The connections and adjacent open spaces support this central plaza with the ability to host a variety of urban activities, recreation and festivities all year-round both day and night. The central plaza can be used during larger, civic or other special gatherings below the ballroom (west plaza). Paving patterns, colors and finishes define the vehicular and pedestrian uses while maintaining a connected sense of motion and gravity toward the plazas, tower, retail and open spaces. Permanent and removable bollards will flank vehicular areas to provide safety and flexibility during different events. The locations of the garage entries were closely coordinated to optimally direct traffic and meet local code while also maximizing the surface area surrounding the tower. The series of public spaces will connect one another toward the tower while providing a unique amenity to hotel visitors, office tenants, residents and all who visit the tower. The spaces are created to act as civic, cultural and technologically connected flexible open spaces that are cherished by the City of Kunming. Colorful planting will be used to guide the community through the site and into the tower. Trees, shrubs and flowering vines will line the public pathways and onto the pedestrian bridge. Residents, office tenants, and guests will be able to view a unique, curated nature from above.
Design Integration with Architecture
The design team explored in-depth environmental analysis with the architects to develop many opportunities to utilize planting, through its integration in the façade and the interior of the building. The outdoor experience will also be enhanced by the microclimatic design strategies that improve outdoor comfort, which can be measured using the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV). This indicator uses temperature, humidity, solar radiation, air movement, clothing and activity level to measure comfort on a seven-point thermal scale that runs from cold (–3) to hot (+3) with zero as the ideal condition.
Vegetated surfaces will provide habitat that gives local wildlife food, water, cover and places to raise offspring. Together the collaboration proved that natural principles and vegetation can be integrated in the design of outdoor spaces at various levels of the tower providing a more comfortable and enjoyable experience. The ability to maximize the opportunity for open-air activities is a rarity in China, so it was imperative for the landscape architectural team to continue to champion for integration of terraces, operable windows on amenity level’s indoor spaces and to expose retail that would have been sunk below in the B-1 level. Through grading studies and modeling, the landscape team was able to develop a design that created inviting terraces down into the B-1 level retail. These terraced plazas became a large-scale sunken bowl experience on the east open space area including retail with green-roof systems and an inviting connection into the central tower site’s B-1 level.
The ability of the design team to communicate the significant opportunity provided by connecting to the open space of the adjacent parcels was critical in the final design proposal for the small urban footprint of Kunming Tower Park. The final result is a multi-tower, multi-use development that is comprehensively connected to its urban framework and serves its adjacent neighbors rather than simply operating as an object to be viewed within the urban grid.