A character town with character

Jade Town

Location: Sihui, China
Client: CFLD China Fortune Land

Programme: 192 ha masterplan and cluster development strategy for a destination town around jade

Sihui is the largest jade producing city in China. The Chinese proverb “A jade without chiselling is not a useful object” guides our proposal for an area between new motorway access and existing town center, and along a massive new jade wholesale trading zone – – both urbanistically and architecturally.

In the planning scale, as so common in Chinese planning, the proposal can’t escape from the approved grid structure of main roads. But it carves out a finer and more context-based system of slow movement networks and landscapes from this crude structure. Set within a wetland farming area, our planning retains a water character within most of the development plots: riverside places, urban canals and setting along water ponds. Architecturally the proposal refers to different stages of Jade manufacturing to guide the experience of character areas for the three target groups: touristic visitors, Jade Merchants and a new generation of Jade designers and manufacturers.

Stages:
2017 Concept

Team:
Kexin Huang, Markus Appenzeller, Martin Probst, Qian Gu, Ruizhi Cao, Wenchi Yang