Shanghai picks NU demonstration project

Baltimore design firm Design Collective has won a competition to design mixed-use residential and retail buildings for a housing development in the Pudong district of Shanghai, China. The firm was awarded a $100,000 prize and the right to negotiate a contract with the project’s Chinese developer. Design Collective, which has masterplanned new urbanist and transit-oriented projects in Maryland and Washington, DC, was one of 12 US design firms in the competition. The competition is an outgrowth of a collaboration between Chinese development authorities and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (see October/November 2000 issue). The Congress for the New Urbanism last year hosted a meeting between a Chinese delegation and American new urbanist designers. China faces an urgent need for new housing. Authorities estimate that Shanghai alone needs 800,000 new housing units in the next five years. “Shanghai is growing incredibly fast,” says Matt D’Amico, a senior associate with Design Collective. “The Pudong district has grown from farmland to 6 million residents in 20 years.” Pudong currently consists of countless six- or seven-story, single-loaded buildings lined up like army barracks, D’Amico adds. The greatest obstacle to a new urbanist plan is the Chinese building code, which requires every living room and master bedroom to receive at least two hours of direct sunlight a day. Consequently, all buildings must have an east-west orientation. Design Collective’s plan breaks this pattern, introducing streets in both directions and buildings that still get sunlight, but to a lesser degree. The plan also goes against the grain by varying building heights, ranging from 8 to 12 stories in the town center, to 4 stories on the periphery. D’Amico notes that developments in the area typically have one large park or recreational area, while the new urbanist plan proposes a series of smaller greens among the 1,200 residential units and ground-floor retail. The final look of this demonstration project will emerge in negotiations between Design Collective and the developer, but D’Amico says HUD and the rest of the American delegation has already provided strong support by insisting that the plan be allowed to break the rules of the Chinese building code.