The International Community of Jiading Masterplan

    location: Jiading District, Shanghai, PR China

    program: masterplan design with mixed use to house the foreign community living in the Shanghai Jiading district. 400.000m2 housing, 21.000m2 commercial, 74.000m2 educational, 39.000m2 offices, 12.000m2 indoor sport, 12.000 religious buildings, 8.000m2 community center, 5.000m2 municipal facilities, 14ha public park

    dates: project 2019 -

    data: total area 1km2

    architect: waltritsch a+u, Arch. Dimitri Waltritsch Trieste, Italy
    local support office: Morph design, Shanghai, PR China

    team: Dimitri Waltritsch with Piero Ongaro, Elena Formica, Adriano Riosa, Fabio Marzan, Dario Marzan, Ilaria Ciancibello

     

    Cities have a greater influence on the quality of life. Cities today must be for people and take care of all aspects in life. Most of all, they need to be livable and designed and thought at human scale. The built enviroment contributes a great deal to our quality of life and economic success and delivers enormous value to society. This masterplan is part of the Jia Ding New Town development stretching on a 64km2 area close to the old city center. The aim of this project is to create a highly diversified community of people, feeling at home in a highly diversified built and natural landscape where human scale prevails. While the main road system connects to the city network providing good accessibility, the single plots are pedestrian neighbourhoods, providing not only easy, rapid and logic connection, but also a beautifull aesthetic experience. Bearing in mind that water is a very important landscape feature within the everyday life of the whole Region, and that Jia Ding itself has a network of 2.000km of canals, the existing water system and canal network is enhanced and enlarged. The built masterplan is made out of typological diversification, which is overlaid onto a clear, but articulated grid of public and semi-public space, made of pedestrian alleys and human scale designed waterfront, introducing a variety of canals and a water park. The visual connection between different spaces functions as an orientation tool in the city, and can help guide people from place to place. The proposed buildings are following the local typolgies, while at the same time are investigating possible developments and adaptations for a mixed local-foreign new inhabitants. The New Jia Ding Village aims to interpret the spatial relationship produced into the streets of the neighbouring old village in a contemporary manner, reproducing the height differences between the pagodas and the ordinary houses, as well as the changing and direct relationship with the water milieau. The Sunflowers of Jia Ding is a typological adaptation of the European city closed block to the always south oriented Chinese slab, introducing a variety of private and semi private spaces. Along the central Shuangding road the Midtown High Rises are introducing a new built landscape made of terraced setback when progressing upwards. Besides the residential developments, a Midtown Public Life distric is created around a central water plaza, hosting a community center for all nationalities, a commercial center and some offices with cafes and restaurants at the ground floor. A 1,5km long Green & Blue park stretches longitudinally through the site, allowing N-S and E-W connection. The backbone of the park is a single row of trees on a dyke, while triangle shaped areas are providing space for activities. Two schools, The International School and The Experimental High School, as well as a Sport Center housed into a green slope are facing the Park, which ends into a delta-like organised Multi Religious Center, housing a Buddhist Temple, a Catholic and a Protestant Church, underlining the multi cultural and multi national character of this neighbourhood.


    Images and text © D. Waltritsch. Use only by permission.