Laguna Beach Landscape Firm Wins Competition for Chinese Park

A landscape architecture firm with Southland offices announced today that it won an international competition for the design of a waterfront park in Shanghai's Pudong business district.

SWA Group, which has offices in Los Angeles and Laguna Beach, will oversee the construction of a 1.4-mile long "central park" along the waterfront, which will abut a mixed-used "Front City" gateway development.

Work on the project is set to start in the spring.

"The exponential growth of Shanghai has outpaced the confines of the historic core of Pudong, prompting development of satellite cities in greater Shanghai," said Ying-Yu Hung, SWA's managing principal, "but now Shanghai sees Front City as a step in reasserting its role as a gateway and center of commerce, and an opportunity to strengthen the urban core."

Situated between the Huangpu River and the Outer Ring Expressway, the Front City site is one of the last remaining waterfront parcels along the river, commanding a valuable real estate location and an important first impression at the city's forefront.

SWA worked with the New York-based architecture firm Morphosis to come up with a design that "builds on the role of Shanghai as a place where tradition and modernity meld to form a unique cosmopolitan identity," Hung said. Within this major new waterfront space, the design includes five distinct components: An International Front, Ecological Front, Civic Front, Community Front and Youth Front.

"Each Front is rooted in sustainable design and represents an important element of Shanghai's dynamic culture," Hung said. "As a city built on the intersection of land and water, of past and present, of East and West ideology, Shanghai holds important stature among the major cities of the World."

--City News Service