Tangshan Nanhu Central Park Landscape Design - 8a Biennal 2014

Youfeng An, Jie Hu, Lushan Lu, Xiaoyang Wang

Tangshan Nanhu Eco-city is located 1 km south of the center of Tangshan City. The total area of the Eco-city is 105 km2, with a core area of 38.5 km2, and the Central Park within the core area is 630 ha.
In 1976, Tangshan suffered a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, a large area mined out space collapsed and subsided. By 2006, the subsidence area had grown to 28 km2. Nanhu area became a typical urban brownfield filled with urban and industrial waste, as well as domestic sewage.
In August 2008, based on the analysis and research regarding the geological structure and potential risk of continued coal mining subsidence in Nanhu, designers started a series of research and planning studies: utilizing Geographical Information System (GIS) for the analysis of the status of land use, collecting eco-factors, evaluating land eco-sensitivity and construction suitability, and determining an appropriate and secure basis for land development.
The park is divided into northern and southern parts. The northern part is basically stable and featured with large natural landscape construction and public recreational facilities. The southern part is still partly unstable and designed as ecological conservation and restoration. Subsidence calculation was used to create terrains because of a variety of landscape effects in different periods.
A 270 ha lake has been formed through excavating, dredging and integrating the existing fish fond and subsidence tunnel. Large area wetland landscape was designed to purify the reclaimed water thoroughly, creating unique wetland scenery also as a science and education base. There were over 160 types of plants used in the park to form a diversity of ideal habitats. Existing plants in the park has been preserved maximally, while dominant plant species was taking precedence in plant selection. Light timber framed buildings were built in consideration of limited ground bearing capability, traditional Chinese culture, resource and energy consumption, and environmental effects on the park.
Additionally, a series of ecological techniques of "low carbon, low impact and low cost" have been performed regarding existing severe problems, such as rubbish hill, coal ash, soft foundation and water loss and soil erosion.
Following the completion of Nanhu Central Park, the extreme minimum temperature of Tangshan has increased 3-4℃ and extreme maximum temperature has decreased 3-4℃; urban green coverage within Tangshan city has increased to 44 % from 41.57 %; the number of wild bird species has increased to more than 100; in holidays, an average of over 100,000 people visit the Central Park every day; land value surrounding Nanhu area has increased at least 16 billion dollars.

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