Xili Reservoir Blueway

Xili Reservoir Blueway

Located in Xili International Science and Education District in Shenzhen, the site holds valuable water resource for 1/3 of Shenzhen’s population, precious Hakka village culture and also stands as future intelligent highland for high-end research and education industry. Therefore, we put forward the concept of “Xili, the resource of ecology”, to make Xili Lake Reservoir Blueway as both water resource protection and a new model for natural inclusive urban-landscape development.

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The site requires ecological recovery, urban-rural regeneration and upgrading landscape gateway under the strict rules of water resource protection. Therefore we explored the characteristics of 7 rivers by deep site investigation and diagnosis, and processed the structure as ‘Southern city district & Northern wild landscape’. We preserve the ecological values and historical villages’ cultural values for the 4 northern blueways, reverse its hidden wilderness into perceptible riverfront experience. We enhance the linkage between southern urban blueways with surrounding urban areas, transforming the original channelized backside river into an inspiring public waterfront for gathering and communication, which function also as stage for urban innovations.
On regional scale, we intends to build up a mountain-lake-sea leisue & slow traffic framework, by completing the round-lake blueway, Yangtai Mountain trails and connection with surrounding Dasha River Blueway, which forms a 25km continuous double green & blue rings.

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We select Baimang co-sharing academic park, Makan community park Kirin Theatre, Dakan-Makan natural exploration park as 3 key areas to express the innovative urban public space, natural inclusive waterfront leisure and urban village transformation by solid design. Besides, the multi-disciplinary team also formulate specific proposals for hydrology & ecology, slow traffic system & transportation, program operation, lighting design, smart park & low carbon development, phasing etc., in order to provide an comprehensive all-in-one solution for Xili Reservoir Blueway.

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The difficult challenges of this blueway project is how to integrate 7 rivers, which is different in water quantity, ecology, topography, land use, into one systematic while adaptive strategies & design solutions, and achieve the vision within all kinds of limitations.
During the working process, our team dedicated to proceed and combine hydrology and ecology study, urban-river relationships, spatial accessibility and local cultural identity research, in order to formulate 7 rivers into such South-city North-Nature framework; And the application of toolbox adapting into each site for design also urge us to reconsider how to evolve the design while still heritage the original concept while in the end present with a innovative and considerate content.