White Swan Estuary Urban Design Competition, Guangzhou (2008)

Abstract of the White Swan Project, Urban Design Competition, Guangzhou City Government


原点复兴， 城市再生 Renaissance of Origin， Regeneration of City
In the Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s (1980)， M. Tafuri puts forward the idea of the historical “project” as an open construct that reactivates past events in its reading of the present. History is redefined and reinvented as a shifting and complex plurality rather than a given monolithic and comprehensive whole. For Guangzhou， the re-construction of historical area White Swan Estuary District is first of all a deconstruction， decomposition and analysis of the pieces that provide the elements for creating new urban form. In this sense， the historical and future trajectory of White Swan Estuary District should be active， not only determined by the objects it analyses but also determinant of the realities it deconstructs and recomposes. Acting on a multiple and non-linear time， the history is able to produce the future， while it offers itself as an always provisional and intrinsically endless analytical construct.

Context
The site of White Swan district is located at the urban fringe of historical city center of Guangzhou. The 30 square kilometers site is full of warehouses, industrial and port facilities, farm land and sporadic pattern of village settlements in city. After twenty years of spatial expansion of Guangzhou’s urban and industrial development, the city government first looks at the issue of urban regeneration in the existing urban district . The process of de-industrialization and containerization has recently released a huge piece of derelict land along the waterfront that is adjacent to the existing city center. The redevelopment of the White Swan area may promote economic, social and cultural values of Guangzhou’s city central area.

Urban Design and Development Strategy
Looking at the complexity of the waterfront redevelopment issue, we realize that the urban design competition is not about a space making only, it is a partially physical, partially institutional and partially financial project of design and development. We therefore emphasize on the process and development mechanism rather than the final urban form only. The urban design and development strategies include the following three components:

1. To find out the key “urban catalyst” to initiate the process of urban regeneration – It is critical to look at the start-up project that can begin the redefine the urban function, urban form as well as urban meaning of the area. An entirely new city image and appropriate development project will kick off the process of redevelopment.

2. To investigate the vertical planning system of the area – We have observed an urban phenomenon of the area that had been developed based on spontaneous and individual development action, which lacks coordination and planning control from governmental sector. It results in a landscape fragmentation and out of control development behavior that has been sprawling over the area. Through urban systematic analysis of the land use, transportation, green, waterway and existing settlement, we extract the existing urban functional layers and reorganize the vertical planning systems of the area through recombination and reconfiguration of the urban infrastructure, land use pattern, green ecosystem and stream corridor. It is for the preparation of making an effective planning control and public investment of the area.

3. To redevelopment the area through incremental process – We have identified an urban pattern of “ecological gradient” as the main characteristic of the district, from the flower farm economy at the surroundings, the hybrid landscaping as the background eco-infrastructure, the waterfront redevelopment belt as the “piano key” pattern and the TOD-driven redevelopment simulation of the central area that contains many existing urban villages. The urban design proposal highlights the process and mechanism for redeveloping the area incrementally, rather than a fancy final urban geometry.

As one of the first initiatives of urban regeneration of Guangzhou’s central area, the White Swan project show a challenging issue in the context of Chinese rapid speed development of cities – how do we reconstruct the existing urban fabric that can respond to the changing economy from manufacturing based to service-based industry, the changing society and the increasing demand of environmentally sustainable requirement? The White Swan project provides a lesson that many Chinese cities are in need of a new approach of urban intervention of that can reconstruct and redevelop their existing city, infrastructure and landscape in a more sustainable way.