Grant Associates wins international competition to create city park for Tianjin, China
Landscape architect Grant Associates has won an international competition to create a new 41 hectare city park for Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City (TJEC) in northern China.
Occupying a central location in Tianjin Eco-City on the Gu Dao Canal, the design vision for Friendship Park is a park that welcomes visitors of all ages, celebrating the friendship between China and Singapore, and embodying the principles of sustainability.
Grant Associates' masterplan aims to translate these ideas onto site by interlocking contrasting landscapes and characters - like water and land, nature and city - while maintaining a unity in the design with a continuous landform.
Grant Associates Singapore will lead the design of Tianjin Sino-Singapore Friendship Park with a phased masterplan that proposes a Conservatory of five glass biomes, housing tropical plant collections and water gardens. Other key design elements include a wetland centre, an urban dock, play areas, event lawn and amphitheatre.
Alongside Grant Associates, the design team for the Conservatories includes Wilkinson Eyre Architects, environmental design consultant Atelier Ten and structural engineer Atelier One. The team will collaborate with local consultants to deliver the project, which will be the most high-profile public park within the 30 sq km eco-city. Friendship Park is also intended as an all-season, international tourist destination.
Singapore's National Parks Board (Nparks), the original client behind Gardens by the Bay, is acting in the capacity as advisor to Tianjin Eco-City for the Friendship Park scheme. Confirmed local partners for Grant Associates' design team include Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA).
Friendship Park is one of several landscape projects sustaining the growth of Grant Associates' Singapore office. The practice is currently working on a series of prestigious projects in the region, including Funan Mall and Paya Lebar Quarter in Singapore, and the Vietnamese-German University (VGU) in Vietnam.