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Reimagining Guomao Intersection
Discipline : Urban Design, Landscape Architecture & Landscaping
Categories : Concept / concept in landscape and/or urban development : Gold Certification
The Guomao intersection constitutes the largest area of public space within the Beijing Central Business District (CBD). As Beijing races to become one of the great cities of the world, this center of the CBD becomes a glaring contradiction to the city’s futuristic ambitions.
When mapped, it is possible to see that Guomao is an incredibly complex, multilevel, interconnected landscape. It is not only an intersection for cars but contains all forms of public transport and is heavily used by people, yet entirely foregoes the humanity of its occupants in its narrow-minded interpretation of infrastructure. Guomao is a landscape and needs to be designed as one. Above all else, the Guomao intersection needs to be designed for humans, not for machines.
In response to various existing proposals for Guomao both theoretical and real, BAM perceives a void. Theoretical proposals tend to not deal with the reality of the site condition, whereas the ‘real’ proposals are nothing more than corporate architectural and planning professionals fulfilling requirements as set forth by government bureaus and developers. In either case, Guomao design proposals be they theoretical or ‘real’ are inevitably envisioned as architecture.
BAM’s proposal for Guomao intends to illustrate the true power of Landscape-Thinking when applied to desperate urban conditions such as the Guomao intersection, and work to debunk architecture-oriented visions of urbanity and infrastructure.
Collaboration
Landscape Architecture : Ballistic Architecture Machine
Engineering : Systematica
