MILAN, July 8 (Class Editori) — Pininfarina Architecture has been selected by the Taozhuang Municipality among four international architectural firms to design the master plan for a new city to be built in the Yangtze River Delta area, not far from Shanghai.
The project aims to strengthen the strategic cooperation between Italy and China, which began with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by which Italy officially joined the Belt and Road Initiative in 2019.
The name of the project, Blue Loop, stems from the system of waterways surrounding the area, designed to support the local agricultural and productive fabric, as well as a mobility infrastructure to connect the site to neighboring population centers, including the UNESCO World Heritage water city of Xitang.
The initiative goes in the direction of the guidelines of the Yangtze River Delta Regional Integrated Development Plan, which considers waterways as an essential resource for generating and sustaining economic and social prosperity, as well as a central element of the natural ecosystem and climate regulation.
As a whole, the project is divided into three different urban ecosystems: Italy-City, a city with a primarily residential vocation, recalling the spatiality of Italian urban centers; Innovation Valley, with office facilities, research centers and a university; Energia, an integrated hub for energy production from renewable sources, integrated with hydroponic agricultural cultivation.
Italy-City has been designed designed as a water city, inspired by Chinese tradition and by the nearby city of Xitang, integrating characteristic features of Italian cities, focusing on green spaces and public areas.
Water is the primary element used to move and interact: a dense network of navigable channels provides the ideal link between the city and nearby Fenhu Lake. The city covers a total area of 2,000,000 square meters across four districts with different housing and urban densities. From east to west: Marina, inspired by contemporary Italian architecture; Lungo Lago, with arcaded buildings recalling a typical Italian building typology; Città Vecchia, a floating district connected by a network of channels and squares; Laguna, where the natural environment blends with the urban landscape in a green city logic.
The Innovation Valley has been conceived as a new center of scientific excellence and as a large contemporary international district, an environment fostering knowledge and sustainable growth, open to anyone who wants to innovate, research or study, creating a vital space for the area in a strategic position in northern China.
The Innovation Valley also plans to experiment with new models of sustainable mobility, exclusively integrating electric, self-driving and shared vehicles.
Energia combines a waste-to-energy plant covering more than 250,000 square meters and an experimental agriculture hub of about 300,000 square meters, creating a unique model of contemporary infrastructure, integrated into the landscape as well as the urban dynamics, aimed at minimizing emissions to the environment.
(Source:Class Editori)
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