Kind of Project:

Urban Planning, Public

Location:

Haikou, Hainan

Site Area:

30,000 m2

GFA:

25,000 m2

Budget:

N/A

Period:

2008

Consultant:

ACLA (Landscape)

ICE Design Team:

Ulrich Kirchhoff, Louise Low, Claudia Wigger

Laure Bouchard

The Park Mall is a feasibility study on how to increase the commercial use of a central public open and green park, while maintaining the maximized landscape and recreational use of it. As parks and green areas in the city are not allowed to have more than 5-10% buildings, we looked into a condition, where a building is not a building any longer, but a landscape: The idea is very simple but intriguing: We maintain 100% of open green area, hence add another 100% of programmable space. As the laws in China allow to declare a building a green space, when the soil depth is at least 3 m thick, we introduced architecture, that creates a balance between construction costs through a thick and heavy floor plate and the area needed, to regain the investment in a shorter time.