Yingde Commercial Street

The project is in Yingde, an up-and-coming Chinese city already served by the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed rail. Though the programme is commercial in nature, a main interest was in creating a vibrant street, with the aim of making the development work as an urban catalyst.

The overall design draws on the idiom of Chinese landscape, of the relational compositions of mountain and water, bridge, pavilion, rockery and planting. Ten low rise blocks are arranged to frame a pedestrian promenade that passes through the centre of them—as a river might carve its life through a land of mountains.

Though it is linear, the street is neither straight nor straightforward, being framed by buildings whose edges have been irregularly formed. Boutique-scaled shops and al-fresco dining overlook and thus partake in the constant change and movement of the street.

Surrounding buildings, all taller, look down to the mall’s folded roofscape. These folds, juts, crags and corners—extending to the detailing on the layered underside of the roofs—create a modern silhouette befitting of the fast-rising city yet still relates to Yingde’s karst topography that had indeed been formed on a very different time scale.