「HEART OF IMAGINATION」Ningbo Xiangshan People’s Square Area Urban Design and Conceptual Architecture and Landscape Design Architecture International Competition

Architecture Competition: 「HEART OF IMAGINATION」Ningbo Xiangshan People’s Square Area Urban Design and Conceptual Architecture and Landscape Design Architecture International Competition

Xiangshan is a unique maritime city by the coast of East China Sea, on the southern edge of the Yangtze River Delta, and on the eastern coastline of Zhejiang Province.   Its name came from “mountains shaped like elephants in Haiqu” (elephant is pronounced as “Xiang” and mountain is pronounced as “Shan” in Chinese).

The civilization history of Xiangshan can be traced back to Tashan Culture 6000 years ago. Looking back, “asking for land and roads among mountains and oceans”—the history of Xiangshan is a history of wrestling with nature and striving for better life.

Presently, Xiangshan bears the vision of becoming a “Modern Coastal Garden City” of Ningbo，playing an essential role of Ningbo City’s goal of competing for “Global Ocean Central City”. In addition, Xiangshan acts as a pioneer and model of multiple national and provincial development strategies, such as “Marine Ecological Civilization”, “Maritime Power” and “Maritime Two Mountains Theory”. In Xiangshan, people use the phrase “Wanxiang Shanhai Drawring” * to represent the overall vision of the city’s future development. This competition is about depicting the central scene for the “Wanxiang Shanhai Drawing”.

*In Chinese, “Wanxiang” means the “all”, and “Shanhai” means “mountains and oceans”. This phrase “Wanxiang Shanhai” comes from a famous ancient Chinese poem depicting the beautiful Scenery of Xiangshan Costal line.

01 PROJECT NAME

「HEART OF IMAGINATION」

Ningbo Xiangshan People’s Square Area Urban Design and Conceptual Architecture and Landscape Design International Competition

02 PROJECT LOCATION

People’s Square, Xiangshan County, Ningbo City,

Zhejiang Province, China

03 BACKGROUND

The competition site is located at the “People’s Square Station” TOD area of the Ningbo-Xiangshan Suburban Railway, which is the most valuable space to be developed in the center of Xiangshan. At present, with the improvement of transportation accessibility and expansion of economic structure, a more attractive urban center in the People’s Square area has become vital for the competitiveness of Xiangshan.

Xiangshan County will take advantage of the People’s Square TOD integrated development to introduce the functional renewal and upgrade of the urban core area, creating a robust public service core and a strong center with both attractiveness and local characteristics, and thus to respond and promote the leap of local development.

This competition is organized by the People’s Government of Xiangshan County.   We sincerely invite global design and consulting institutions to participate in the co-creation of “Wanxiang Shanhai Drawing”. We look forward to a renewed People’s Square that not only serves as a destination for public services and urban lifestyle, but also a new cultural landmark and a strong point for Xiangshan’s city brand.

04 PROJECT CONTENT

The competition includes two sections: 1) urban design; 2) conceptual architecture and landscape design.

1） Urban design

The urban design scope is about 58 hectares.

Participating units are required to consider the public open spaces, public culture buildings, commercial, office, apartments and residential areas around the People’s Square Station to create an urban center with convenient traffic, a vibrant and friendly atmosphere, rational distribution, distinct characters, and ecological friendly environment.

2） Conceptual architecture and landscape design

The architecture and landscape design scope should be located in an area of about 27 hectares on the west side of Donggu Road. The specific scope shall be determined by the urban design scheme and shall at least cover the People’s Square and all public cultural and sports venues.

The participating units are required to integrate the architectural and landscape design for the People’ s Square， Public Fitness Center，Shanhai Wanxiang Hall ， Civic Reading Center with i30 Xiangxin Tower， to create a city public cultural center with the functions of culture, art, sports, exposition, education, etc., and to shape a set of landmark architectural cluster representing the cityscape and city spirit of Xiangshan.

a. People’s Square. An urban open space that provides functions such as large-scale festivals, outdoor sports, and natural recreation.

b. Public Fitness Center. It is made up of a 3,000-seat indoor arena, providing more than 20 functions including ball sports, recreational activities and so on. It will become the healthy lifestyle destination for Xiangshan locals.

c. Shanhai Wanxiang Hall (Museum and Urban Planning Exhibition Hall). This is a city experience center that exhibits the history and future urban plans of Xiangshan, and also serves as a destination of marine-ecology education and art exhibition. It aims to become the most important impression display interface of the city.

d. Civic Reading Center (Library). It shall accommodate more than one million books. As a new multi-purpose library, it also provides the functions such as performance-viewing, education and so on. It will become the social living room for citizens, bringing together spiritual islands, and be an imaginative ocean of knowledge, inspiring eternal exploration of the unknown.

e. i30 Xiangxin Tower (City Cultural Landmark). A Landmark that symbolizes the spirit of the maritime city, which also inspires an intense sense of belonging to the city. (* The “lighthouse” is not intended as a suggestion of architectural form.)

05 EXPERT JURORS

Mr. MENG Jianmin

Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering;

Chief Architect of SZAD

Mr. LI Xiangning

Dean and Professor of College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University

Mr. LU Zhongxiao

Executive Director of Nikken Sekkei Co.;

President of Nikken Sekkei (Shanghai) Consulting Co.

Mr. MA Weidong

Chinese partner of Tadao Ando Architect & Associates

Initiating Founder of IAM

Mr. Tom Leader

Founder and principal of TLS Landscape Architecture

06 PRIZES

The total bonus pool is up to RMB 14.7 million (incl. GST), with 7 finalists including:

1 First Prize, award RMB 3,000,000 (incl. GST)

1 Second Prize, award RMB 2,500,000 (incl. GST)

1 Third Prize, award RMB 2,000,000 (incl. GST)

4 Finalist Award: each award RMB 1,800,000 (incl. GST)

*The first-place participating unit should make an around of optimization and fine-tunning of their scheme of urban design, architecture and landscape in the same depth base on comments and suggestions from the organizer.

07 COMPETITION RULES

This international competition adopts the method of “open solicitation + invitation”, which is divided into the phase for public registration, qualification review, and proposal selection (referred to as “Proposal Selection Phase”) and the phase for design submission and final review (referred to as “Design Phase”).

1) Proposal Selection Phase: 3 participating unites are invited to be directly shortlisted for the next phase. In addition, the organizer will set up a review committee, and select 4 shortlisted units from the participating units (including consortium) of public registration, a total of 7 participating units will be shortlisted for the second phase.

2) Design Phase: After the 7 shortlisted units (including consortium) submit valid outcome documents, the organizer will set up a review committee to review the design works of the 7 shortlisted units.

For details and requirements, please refer to the RULES AND REGULATIONS.

08 SCHEDULE

Phase I: The phase for public registration, qualification review, and proposal selection

Phase Ⅱ: The phase for design submission and final review

*Note: The above time is subject to Beijing time. In view of uncontrollable factors such as the epidemic, the organizer reserves the right to adjust the schedule.

09 REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS

1） Participating units shall be either enterprises or institutions with an independent legal entity registered in China or abroad.

2） Consortium shall be accepted for the participation with member numbers do not exceed three. No consortium members shall have the right to participate in the competition again alone or with another consortium by another name. The consortium members shall be requested to sign a Consortium Agreement with force of law whilst specifying the leading entity and individual labor division.

3）If the participating unit (including consortium) is a foreign organization, it shall have a legal relevant business scope (planning or architecture) in its country or region. It is required that at least one of the participating designers shall have the knowledge of the Chinese language, so the designers shall be ensured to have an accurate understanding of the regional background of China and relevant requirements.

4）No individual or individually-combined group will be accepted for the sign-up.

5）Participating units (including consortium) with following project experience shall be given the prioritized consideration for further qualification: rich experiences of key comprehensive transportation hub projects of urban design domestically or internationally; experiences of cultural architecture and landscape design.

6）The participating unit shall ensure that its project leader and chief designers participate in the whole design work. The designers participating in this international competition should be registered personnel of the participating unit. The chief designer shall have directed key comprehensive transportation hub projects of urban design, cultural and sports architecture or landscape design domestically or internationally, and must take charge of the main design work of the project, as well as important briefing meetings required by the host. If there is any inconsistence found between the actual chief designer and that in the name list submitted for prequalification, or there is a false situation found in the project experience submitted for prequalification, the host reserves the right to nullify the involved participating units from being shortlisted and winning, and hold such participating units responsible for corresponding legal liabilities.

10 REGISTRATION

If you are interested in participating in this competition, please check the competition official website: https://www.onetenth.cn/cn/competitionDetail/Xiangshan

Detailed materials of the competition can be downloaded after registration.

11 SUBMISSION

Participant units shall submit the registration documents and the conceptual design proposal as required. The conceptual design proposal can be used to express the design and ideas in a variety of forms such as separated chapters or a combination of graphics and text describing in detail the understanding of the project and the core intentions and ideas of the design. The content should ideally be 30 pages, in Chinese and English (For details and requirements, please refer to the RULES AND REGULATIONS).

The submission of electronic documents for competition registration will officially end at 16:00 on June 7, 2022 (GMT+8). All participating units are requested to submit the application documents (including the registration documents and the conceptual design proposal, which must be affixed with the official seal; if it is a consortium, all member units must affix their official seal or signature; electronic seal is acceptable) and send it to the following email address: competition@onetenth.cn, please indicate “Xiangshan Competition Application Documents Submitted + Name of Participating Unit” in the email title, and indicate the delivery method and courier information of the paper documents.

The paper documents should be sent or delivered to the following address by 16:00 on June 9, 2022 (GMT+8): Natural Resources and Planning Bureau of Xiangshan County, No. 869 Danhe East Road, Xiangshan County, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, China; Attn: LIN Jiaxin, Tel: +86-15858433125 (mobile) +86-574-89522061 (landline), post code: 315700. The paper application documents should be printed on both sides, the registration documents and the conceptual design proposal should be bound into two separate volumes, A4 size, and submitted in 7 copies (the official seal must be affixed; if it is a consortium, all member units must affix their official seal or signature; electronic seal is acceptable). The documents must be sealed and packaged in one packaging bag, and the sealed bag shall be marked with “「HEART OF IMAGINATION」Ningbo Xiangshan People’s Square Area Urban Design and Conceptual Architecture and Landscape Design International Competition” and the name of the participating unit. The seal of the sealed bag must be kept sealed.

The Competition Committee will reply to the confirmation receipt after receiving both the electronic and the paper application documents and confirming that they are correct. Participating units who receive the confirmation receipt email represent successful registration. Taking into account the special circumstances of the epidemic, if the paper documents cannot be delivered on time due to force majeure, please contact the Competition Committee in advance to inform the situation and provide relevant certificates such as postmarks.

The content of paper documents and electronic documents must be consistent. If there is any difference, the electronic documents shall prevail. Documents received after the deadline will be rejected.

12 INVITED UNITS

After in-depth communication between the organizer and intending inviting participants, fully understood their profiles, design concepts, past cases, and preliminary interpretations of the project, three participants identified as invitees to be shortlisted.

13 ORGANIZATION

Organizer: People’s Government of Xiangshan County, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province

Contractor: Natural Resources and Planning Bureau of Xiangshan County, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province and Xiangshan Municipal Construction Investment Group Co., LTD

Co-organizer: One-tenth Art Company

14 CONTACTS

（10:00-12:00 & 14:00-17:00, Monday to Friday, Beijing Time）

E-mail

competition@onetenth.cn