As the biggest city in China, Beijing grows rapidly in past 20 years while outdoor space such as park hasn’t grown as much as the city. Most parks lack of quality space and up-to-date programs which fails in dragging more people from indoor to outdoor. Beijing Longfor G-Park is a landscape experiment to integrate most advanced technologies in a recreational park setting, at the northwest corner of Beijing metropolitan area, where a number of Hi-tech enterprises have anchored including HUAWEI, LENOVO, BAIDU those world-known IT companies. The implementation of the park not only added a first qualitied public park destination for the IT campus zone, but also introduced a new interactive experience of what landscape can deliver for people beyond its fundamental roles – recreational, run-off mitigation, picturesque, space holder for outdoor events, etc.

A possible future model for technology-driven interactive landscape

The design for this park is more ambitious than just providing a comprehensive, well-made natural-looking outdoor destination. We would like to explore the further capability of a park and the surrounding characters of Hi-Tech gives us a hint. Therefore, we looked into a blend of those advanced technologies from other industries and our physical natural park. Those technologies are meant to be implicitly cooperated in this project just like those trees growing naturally as a default element to make a park, rather than exposing high-tech equipment in their original status. Therefore, keeping the park in a normal appearance of super-simple design language and materiality is the premise to this project. As the site is not that huge, the design sets a loop as the main circulation through which you could have series of programs from seating, event lawn, digital water curtain, tree matrix, to interactive water feature, outdoor meeting room and self-serviced gym box. There are 3 main design features as followings:

As we mentioned early, we want to bring new experience that people and family would love to come often. We believe the key to that is make sure their are enough involvement from people. We really want to make people are part of the park, with whose actions, the park could give surprise and  The lovely intention becomes feasible via a reactive panel module, a prototype of which has been used to harvest energy as human step/jump on it. There are certainly a sense of achievement and kindness when people learn that their movement has gained energies for the park. It’s a little contribution to the environment but we believe it means a lot. The module has multiple mechanical layers as you can see in the diagrams. The structure of those layers makes sure force of human body can be captured and be converted to electricity.

A SELF-SUSTAINED ECO-SYSTEM | The park Itself Supplies Power and Water

A self-sustaining system is one in which the landscape can self-supply power and water for the operation and maintenance. The concept can be realised through solar thin film technology and water storage module devices. One solves the energy cycle and the other stores and reuses the stormwater, so both of which have become the heart of the park, promoting a self-sustainable low-carbon ecological cycle.

NEW DEFINITION TO OUTDOOR OFFICE | working in the nature

As our main intention is to bring more people from indoor to outdoor, we also want the park could be occupied among weekdays during office hours. Thus, we came up with a concept of “WORKING IN THE NATURE”. A movable box is designed in the northeast corner of the park, which can provide a small team meetings with 5-10 people. The box is structured by iron steel frame and the facade are two glass panel which allows the pass-through view experience. The glass panel becomes the most amazing element of this outdoor meeting box as the glass can both be transparent and frosted by switching a button.

A STEP INTO FUTURE

The LONGFOR G-Park is a preflight for future park model. Since its opening in last Novemeber, thousands of people and a number of technologies firms from other industries have visited the park and have a great experience about it. It now becomes the new and probably the only qualitied destination for the district. Because of the park, the government of Beijing Haidian District has decided to raise more funding to extend the park to accommodate more people and events. in addition to that, BAIDU and some other IT companies started to look into more connections between their industry and the landscape industry. This project totally brings a new vision of what a landscape could offer to people, to the society and even to the economic development of the zone. The design of this park envisions a future model of interactive experience in an outdoor environment, especially in China.

Landscape Architecture: Instinct Fabrication Project location: Daoxianghu Ave. Haidian, Beijing, China Design year: 2017-2018 Year Built: 2018