Longtang Lake Wet Park is located in the Lijia area of Chongqing.The popularity and vitality of the park before the renovation was relatively low. Through the pre-project research, we summarized the current situation of the field as follows.
First, the accessibility of the park is poor, and the entrance is weak. Inside the park, the main activity areas are connected by a running track around the lake, with large height difference between inside and outside, and low convenience; Second, the water area in the park accounts for 1/3 of the total area, but the hydrophilicity of the lake is weak, and the content of the activities is single; Third, the park lacks of thematicity in the various functional subdivisions of the park, and it only meets the basic needs of rest, and it lacks the thematic characteristics and the space for the activities that are attractive to the people. Based on the above status quo, the park, despite covering an area of 19 hectares, has a small service area and weak flexibility. In response to this, we have targeted the following aspects of landscape renovation and upgrading.
Shape the differentiation from the neighboring parks on the basis of the original vertical and functional relationships.
Longtang Lake Park has a large area, with natural resources such as Longtang Reservoir, woodland, slope, etc., and the site originally contains different themes and functional zones, which is a natural advantage for shaping a mountain children’s park with strong functionality and participation, and also leads to the differentiated positioning of the project as “children’s outdoor space for playing games and a mountain park for recreation and sports”.
Mountain-inspired children’s theme areas become the park’s core attraction
Children’s play is concentrated in the north side and east side, the north side uses the height difference to form interesting hill beach park and interesting shallow water park, the east side is the largest children’s play area, through the energetic circle big climbing net, all kinds of fun swings, extra-long hill slides, exciting skateboarding park, huge circle theater and other children’s facilities will be the wetland, the hill, skateboarding three major theme parks in series into an exploration of the fun of the path of play.
Nearly 10,000 square meters of children’s space provides more opportunities and places for children to play outdoors, which becomes the core attraction of the park. Multi-dimensional featured play space and rich interactive scene experience enhance the stickiness of the crowd.
Adding space types to expand the radius of park services from the neighborhood to the city level
The park is surrounded by high-density residential areas, but can only be accessed through the two entrances of the west and south squares, so we intervene at multiple points to open up the accessibility of the entrances in all directions from the planar and vertical directions. The park landscape extends organically to the community and becomes the core leisure space of the neighboring settlements.
On top of the original functional structure of the park, the theme of each area is adjusted and upgraded to extend five major theme areas including beach play, wetland recreation, mountain sports, lakeshore loop and bazaar cloud corridor. Emphasis is placed on public participation to gather popularity and drive regional social and economic development.
Increase the waterfront space
The water area of Longtang Reservoir is more than 50,000m2, we retained the original ecological wetland function of the lake and upgraded it, such as purifying the water, upgrading the plant regulation, optimizing the barge, and the water-friendly grandstand, to enhance the hydrophilicity of the landscape.
The plant design retains the thousands of fine status quo large and small arborvitae trees in the old park, continuing the memory of the site and at the same time establishing a functional site that is compatible with the leisure needs of modern people. With open water, ecological barges formed by aquatic plants, and rich trees, this small ecological environment also accommodates the harmony between the city and nature.
It solves the problems of the old park structure and single function, creates new functional venues and activity possibilities, and ultimately creates the social benefits of sharing and enjoyment for all.
Longtang Lake Park
Location: Chongqing,China
Designer: WTD GROUP
Client: LONGFOR REAL ESTATE
Images credit: Prism photography
