As the central link running through the Wangjing Technology Business Innovation Zone, the 70,000-square-meter Wangjing Central Park integrates art, technology, commerce and ecology, and plays a vital role in shaping the regional green space.
AECOM’s design reveals in the theme of “Starry Sky” that includes four major sections: Creative, Business, Artistic, and Ecological green corridor, which are connected by a luminous “Star Rail” that extends in a strip from west to east.
“Spring” is theme of Creative Green Corridor, where AECOM’s design ‘welcomes’ visitors with a colorful vibrant entrance to the park featuring diversified landscapes with flowers, an open urban exhibition square, distinctive sculptures and music fountains.
Next is the Business Green Corridor themed “Ode to Autumn”, in which tall trees and native evergreen trees are the main landscape plants. On the south side, there is an open VR interactive experience gallery, where the AECOM team transforms the kinetic energy of pedestrians trampling into electric energy, and opens the interactive lighting of road side landscape wall to provide a platform for citizens to experience emerging technologies and to communicate with each other. The exhibition plaza on the north side is designed to host outdoor events of different scales and types, which also provides a stage for commercial interaction and product display for surrounding high-tech enterprises, so as to integrate the city with nature.
The Artistic Green Corridor in the east of the park is configured with perennial colored leaves to render a “magic” space. It is partly released as a lawn cover area, not only to increase the interest of the space but also to reserve space for displaying cultural and artistic facilities. Humanized places such as outdoor theaters, children’s playgrounds, leisure and sports field, and landscapes are all distributed across the artistic corridor where people can feel relieved after work. At the same time, the corridor is also built in the internationally popular outdoor office concept where business meetings can be carried out with not only high-tech equipment such as charging pavilion but also be surrounded by artworks.
The Ecological Green Corridor is open and ornamental. In addition to the “Fun Summer” themed green corridors, cherry hillsides, the elaborate landscape bridges and abundant flowers and plants, the AECOM design also provides a professional skateboarding venue to those who like to be challenged by adjustable terrain and color matching grounds.
With “open, modern, green and natural” as the overall style of this park, AECOM replace the traditional migrating ancient trees with 100% native tree species and still ensured the richness of plants. Rainwater gardens are built on low-lying sites to collect and purify rainwater from surrounding squares. Building in a low-impact rainwater system and mitigating the heat island effect in the park making the garden a model for other Beijing parks and small sponge cities.
AECOM’s design integrates modern technology into Wangjing Park in an innovative way, creating a superior business environment and a beautiful living environment for the surrounding enterprises and residents, making it a pleasant public space to inspire creativity and imagination.
Awards:
- 2020 IFLA AAPME Awards – Honorable Mention, Economic Viability
- 2019 HKIUD Design Awards – Grand Award, Built Project Category
- The 8th IDEA-KING AWARD Landscape and Design Competition: The Best Landscape Design