10 Design

The new public space by COFCO is created to connect the adjacent mixed use development of Joy City with Baozixi Park in Wuhan, China. Acting as an ‘ecology line’, the design consists of a public promenade that subtly connects a string of five lightweight, elegant pavilions to one another with a series of substantial civic social spaces that are programmed to foster interaction and collaboration from the nearby metro station arrival to the adjacent Joy City. Together, the promenade, pavilions and open civic spaces weave the park into a unique place, creating a vibrant community asset, and providing a rich and modern identity for this new 21st-century district.

The 26,500sqm development sits in a highly constrained site bordered by primary roads to the north and east, parkland to the south and west, and with metro infrastructure below the response was to provide a protected, low-level yet visible, dynamic series of public spaces that could knit together the hard edged high-rise urban fabric to the east with the natural environment and human scale greenery to the west.

Design Partner, Leonard Milford commented:
“The design unifies two distinct habitat: the urban high-rise and the human scale parkland. This results in a built environment that offers the best of the surrounding context as a sustainable, green, natural and human scaled place with the accessibility, activity, and flexible public realm that dynamic urban spaces should provide. A Social Promenade organises the site’s circulation weaving from the parkside metro to the adjacent mixed use development of Joy City. The Promenade structures an immersive urban park blending retail, entertainment, flowering meadows, tree groves, a multi-purpose outdoor amphitheater, sports courts, community spaces, and fitness stations along this new district thoroughfare.”

The clusters of pavilions and event spaces are structured around primary arrival and viewpoints which sit as the gateways into the park binding a substantial and varied public realm of entertainment spaces, lifestyle areas, and sports and event stages. This series of stages provide a prominent focal point for the community, as regards health, wellbeing and communal activity between the two environments, which all connect back to Joy City through both visually and physically.