This represents the most significant collaboration of my professional life. The project focuses on Pujiang New City, a development spanning nine miles along the Huangpu River, located eight miles south of Shanghai's city center. Designed for 100,000 inhabitants, Pujiang was the winning entry in a closed international competition held in 2001.
This competition was part of the "One City and Nine Towns" initiative, a strategic plan to reorganize the Shanghai metropolitan area by establishing a multi-center scheme with nine urban hubs. Building a city with restricted heights on an agricultural plain, interspersed with canals and villages, presented the significant challenge of urban foundational design. Western influences are evident in how Pujiang interacts with the greater Shanghai area and its environment, notably through an orthogonal grid—a common feature in both classical Western cities and ancient Chinese tradition.
The project brief specifically requested a settlement structured around the division of flow and control of water. Our design proposes an urban scheme with three integrated levels:
A primary road network: Divides the area into large blocks (984 x 984 feet), containing units of low, medium, and mid-high density urban fabric.
A secondary grid: Within these large blocks, bicycle and pedestrian paths establish hierarchies between routes and commercial streets.
A third grid of canals: Some of which are navigable, this system rationalizes water channels and creates an infrastructural and landscape link between the inhabited area and the river.
