Qianhai’s Guiwan Park / Field Operations

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“Guiwan Park is a bold, responsible, and balanced exemplar of new urban landscape infrastructure. The transformation from hermetic canal to woven green infrastructure in just two years is a model for all waterfront cities.” – 2023 Awards Jury. In mid-October 2023, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) held its annual awards ceremony in Minneapolis, USA. Among the international contenders, the Qianhai Guiwan Park project, led by Field Operations, is the only non-U.S. project from China that received the annual Professional General Design Honor Award. This groundbreaking project, Qianhai Guiwan Park, brought together a multidisciplinary team of experts from over 19 fields including engineering, geology, transportation, architecture, and structural engineering. It serves as a testament to China’s prowess in construction and innovation, as the team collectively tackled a global challenge with daring innovation and unwavering dedication. Notably, core members of the team from Field Operations, involved since 2016, proudly represented the project at the esteemed awards ceremony. Through its trailblazing approach and cutting-edge engineering, Qianhai Guiwan Park is not only reshaping the landscape but also transforming the way people live, offering a distinctive contribution to societal advancement.

Project Statement. Guiwan Park is the first “water finger” to be built for Qianhai Water City, an innovative and sustainable new city. As the green core, Guiwan Park supports the city center and creates large-scale blue-green infrastructure for stormwater management, flood protection, and habitat recovery. A continuous coastal park, Guiwan Park features 51,000 sqm of mangroves, 18,000 sqm of freshwater wetland, and 255,000 sqm of parkland, naturalizing the tidal corridor and creating a harmony of beauty and ecological performance. The park combines ecological, social, and urban functions with zones that support sports, leisure, recreation, and nature exploration, creating a “hyper-nature” that brings together natural ecology and strengthens an urban energy web.

From Qianhai Water City to the Guiwan Park. Qianhai Water City creates a new identity for a coastal city with five development districts defined by large green “water fingers” between neighborhoods. This framework outlines a strategy for a more resilient, ecological city. Guiwan Park is the first of five “water fingers” to be built in Qianhai. The park provides a one-of-a-kind amenity by integrating blue-green infrastructure with active and passive recreation, ecology, habitat, and cultural programs, centered around a tidal channel that protects the city and inland area from flooding and improves water quality. As a central park, this large-scale open space is critical to the city’s needs as it develops. The 2.2-kilometer-long, 45-hectare park incorporates programming that caters to an urban context in the west and transitions as it becomes more residential in the east. By synchronizing a pedestrian network, canopy system, wetlands, the canal, and soft surfaces, Guiwan Park cultivates interaction between them, fostering an integrated ecosystem.

Ecological Performance. Guiwan Park’s three terraces—woodland, freshwater wetland, and saltwater wetland—accommodate a steep elevation change between the park’s main road, which sits at 6 meters above sea level, and the central channel water level, which varies from -1 to 2.0 meters. As part of China’s “sponge cities,” the park and its terraces absorb and treat rainwater, including water from the surrounding roads, capturing 90% of annual rainfall and reducing nonpoint source pollution by 72%. Guiwan Park utilizes low-impact development strategies for stormwater management, including grass and gravel swales along main pathways, rain gardens with a sunken greenbelt, and underground tanks for a rainwater filtration and reuse system.

Biodiversity & Habitat Recovery. Guiwan Park features a coastal and continuous topography that incorporates native subtropical plantings, including 51,000 sqm of mangroves that have expanded from 3 to 17 species. The park’s diverse living grounds include forests, bosques, lawns, freshwater wetlands, and saltwater wetlands that increase biodiversity and create new and unique habitat conditions. There has been a resulting re-emergence of many species native to the area, including herons, egrets, curlew, mudskippers, and crabs. Within the first year, the new wetlands have attracted 21 species of macrobenthos, contributing to a healthy marine ecosystem. 

Smart Park. Guiwan Park incorporates technology that monitors soil, irrigation, insects, water levels, and tree conditions. This data is used by maintenance staff to support operations and monitor as the park’s species develop and mature. The same data has been used in partnerships with local institutions to better understand ecological restoration within urban environments, using Guiwan Park as a case study. In addition, an app for visitors allows them to navigate the park with a digital fly-through and learn more about its ecological benefits. 

Impact. Guiwan Park sets a new benchmark, creating a vibrant park that blends design with ecological performance and social interaction. As coastal cities face the effects of climate change, Guiwan Park serves as an example of ecological rehabilitation on a damaged and reclaimed site, leading the way for a more resilient city that harnesses the impact of large-scale blue-green infrastructure while creating restorative open spaces.