By Wang Shen
The Xiongan New Area has started soliciting urban design proposals from reputable domestic and overseas design experts' lead teams to shortlist 12 final applicants, as reported by the Yicai Media Group on Tuesday.
The China State Council previously released their Approval of the Guidelines for the Planning of the Xiongan New Area in Hebei Province, which stated that efforts should stick to creating the "Xiongan Quality" featuring " a world vision, international standards, Chinese characteristics and a high-quality goal," and to turn the new area into a national model for high quality urban development.
In terms of the urban space layout, Xiongan should carry out the development in group stages, and coordinate the three major aspects such as production, life and ecology, and achieve a moderate density distribution.
In shaping the characteristics of Xiongan, the requirements for the architecture are strict. The proposals from the teams should include designing every single building carefully, pursue the art of construction, and uphold the planning guidelines and control of the building volume, height, facade, colour tone and so forth.
According to the guidelines, the blue-green spaces should account for 70 percent of the Xiongan New Area. The land development intensity should be maintained at 30 percent, and the forest coverage rate should exceed 40 percent.
These numbers are new challenges for the development of Xiongan and will have a disruptive impact on the original standards of the architecture industry.
The design teams should also pay attention to the innovation-driven development to provide quality public services, to strengthen the infrastructure construction, and the green, resilient, as well as safe municipal infrastructure.
The Xiongan Quality will improve the standard of the architecture industry and will become a model to promote national high-quality urban construction.
In recent few years, China has actively promoted the construction of ecological civilization, maintained green development, and will focus on garden and landscape construction in the future.
