Project produced in partnership with Silver Architecture. This large scale master planning and architecture project was for a new residential core to China’s Tianjin Eco City, a completely new 350,000 resident city built to China’s highest environmental standards. The master plan design was heavily influenced by the land’s industrial past and its soil pollution problems, as well as chronic water shortages in the region. A narrative of water is intertwined throughout the master plan and neighborhood design details. An extensive system of rainwater collection directs water along various paths through the neighborhoods, from rigorously controlled and defined paths at the development’s center, then progressively becomes more organic and natural as it reaches the outskirts of the development, as streams, and then through and around berms and swales, where it eventually becomes part of the surrounding natural landscape. The pragmatic process of filtration, percolation and groundwater replenishment is rethought as an integral and interactive element in this new town.
