Chapman Taylor wins Chongqing Liangjiang masterplan design competition in China

Chapman Taylor has won an international design competition to create an urban innovation zone for Chongqing Liangjiang, in central China.

Liangjiang has been chosen by the Chinese government as a developmental ‘new area’ for Chongqing, which has a population of nearly 18 million people and is one of China’s four centrally-governed municipalities. The masterplan competition, for which final presentations were made on Friday 19 October, sought designs for a new district to house emerging industries and science and technology R&D companies, with well-known names such as Zaha Hadid Architects and CallisonRTKL taking part.

Chapman Taylor’s winning design creates a series of campuses and R&D clusters, connected to each other via landscaped walkways, all surrounding a central lake and a collaborative innovation zone called ‘The Centre of Ideas’. The campuses feature university-style courtyards, with a series of public and private spaces semi-enclosed by undulating perimeter walls which imitate the meandering path of the nearby rivers.

A series of hillside and waterfront residential, hospitality and cultural villages will be developed as part of the masterplan, each with distinct characters and spatial characteristics. There will also be retail, leisure, F&B, hotels, cultural and civic buildings – all served by a railway/metro hub, new roads, paths and cycleways, water taxis, electric buses and trams.

Sustainability is a core element of the design, which plans for extensive green space, solar energy production, hydroelectric power, smart technology, geothermal energy use, natural ventilation and a biomass power plant.

The new district, strategically located on the Yangtze River development belt, is designed to integrate sympathetically with its beautiful, mountainous surroundings, providing a high-quality living and working environment for the rapidly growing Chongqing region.