SHENZHEN QIANHAI ISLAND

Invited competition

Program: landscape and urban design for the artificial island above the underwater connection between highway S3 and Hubin W Rd

Total site area: 13.5 ha

Client: The People’s Government of Bao’an District in Shenzhen & Urban Planning, Land & Resources Commission of Shenzhen Municipality

Location: Shenzhen, China

Year: 2018 – 2019

Team: NAUTA architecture & research, VTLab London, Metrostudio Shenzhen

How to mitigate the negative effects of an infrastructure based on car traffic and design it to rather adapt nature to the transformations that climate change will bring?

The Shenzhen government is planning to rethink a relatively new portion of the Highway along the Pearl river delta. This infrastructure will soon intersect another highway, which entering the bay, will turn into the Shenzhen-Zhuhai bridge.

In order to minimize the environmental impact of this structure, the government is planning to move the highways’ intersection underwater.
Feasibility studies have been carried out in order to evaluate the impact of such structure, as well as the costs and benefits of different structural typologies.

We have been invited to envisage the potential for transforming this artificial island from a mere technical ventilation shaft into a landscape landmark.
We entered this challenge trying minimizing the impact of the infrastructure and design it as a self-sustainable cluster; An island capable of producing its own energy, collect and discharge rain water, use it for its natural cycles, reuse and compost its waste, react to water rise by defending the interior landscape, while leaving its outer boundary to flood when necessary, produce algae for water phytodepuration and as natural fertilizer; An enclosed natural circle, as much as possible not depending on the depletion of external energy sources.

Our project creates a thematic island that includes leisure, nature and sustainable energies production. An underground parking makes the upper landscape accessible only by boat, feet, bike or small electric vehicles.