Fanqi Road
Location Beijing, China | Client Beijing Chiangshi Oriental Land | Size 3,000 square meters | Status Completed 2014 | Photographer: Fei Qi | Tags Public Realm and Infrastructure
MSP produced a streetscape along the Fanqi Road to a very tight timescale, meeting the client’s request to make it ‘like a mountain.’
The narrow strip of land, just 30’ wide, became a 340-meter contemporary interpretation of a traditional Chinese landscape diorama painting, which illustrates the many facets of the Chinese landscape.
The landscape rises away from the road in a series of extruded stone boxes. The stacked boxes, alongside large boulders of local striated rock, indicate the geological layering and compression often seen in mountains.
The layering is continued in the planting within the boxes: native trees, shrubs and bamboo. These also add height, so the ‘mountain’ steps up to screen the housing project. Water runs from the central hotel entrance downhill to the south and north, cascading down the stone plinths and into the development, as a symbol of vitality and wealth.
The road was completed in time for heads of state including President Xi and President Obama to drive along it to the 2014 APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Conference).
In addition to Fanqi Road, MSP contributed detailed design for a number of other areas within the larger North Diaoyutai Development at Yanqi (Swan) Lake, 50km north of Beijing, China. The development comprises a spa hotel designed by architect Tadao Ando, between two residential communities, and MSP’s design included the southern and northern residential areas and the Shore garden.
We created an immersive landscape framework that ties together the varied architectural styles into one coherent whole.
The Shore garden, nestled at the foot of the Tadao Ando Hotel, is home to five spa pavilions, each secluded in its own area of woodland. A series of 50m x 10m water mirrors appear to be one continuous sheet of water when viewed from the hotel. Only spa guests can move between the water mirrors to see that they are made of ‘floating’ steel sheets over which water flows.When the morning mist rolls in from Fanqi lake, the landscape surface below the water mirrors is shrouded – only the thin water mirrors are seen, appearing to float above the white mist.
The client is the only private developer to be granted a development licence at Yanqi Lake, where the 2014 APEC meetings were held.
