A New Capital City (Xiongan)

XIONGAN, CHINA, 2017

As part of a scheme to remove “non-capital functions” from the hyper-crowding of Beijing, the Chinese government has decided to build a new city about 100 miles to the south.  We were invited to prepare a design for a population of around 1.5 million, seeded with governmental offices, research facilities, and other infrastructure.  The site – next to a huge wetland (the celebrated “Kidney of North China”) – was somewhat dubious but planning was well along for transit infrastructure and the high-level regional organization was not to be controverted.  Our scheme takes a protective attitude towards the wetland and to the population already on site (preserving a number of existing villages) and strives to make a city at once compact, complete, and delightful, with the highest possible levels of metabolic autonomy.  As with any such grandiose design, the all-at-once version is presented in anticipation of its inevitable transformation by the realities of contstruction and inhabitation.

Credits: J. Gu, Y. Liu, M. Okazaki, B. Stigge, M. Sorkin, A. Waxman