Location Jiangyin, Jiangsu, China Client/operator China Construction City Development Ltd in Jiangyin Architect BAU Brearley Architects + Urbanists CN – 200031 Shanghai www.bau.com.au Design Team Guo Liexia, Gao Weiguo, Wu Xiaojian, Pan Linglu, Li Zheng, Yu Zhirui, Rong Yu, Lei Tao, Pablo Jimenez, Manuel Jose Godoy Alvarez, Fang Qun, Huang Fang, Steve Whitford, Peter Felicetti, James Brearley Engineering Shanghai Lin Tong Yan Li Guohao Civil Engineering Consulting Co., Ltd. Author BAU Photos Pavel Shubskiy Official opening 2019 Construction costs RMB 372 million (EUR 48.7 million)
50
WEAVING AND STITCHING GREENWAY IN JIANGYIN The elevated walkway features pedestrian bridges, playgrounds, amphitheatres and inviting arbours. BAU Brearley Architects + Urbanists believe that the greenway generates better urban spaces, brings order to previously random and disconnected decision- making, engages with the best of contemporary aesthetics, solves problems, extends local iconography, is poetic and cost-effective, and opens up social opportunities.
The Jiangyin Greenway belongs to a growing movement in China towards healthy, sustain able mobility and urban enjoyment. Infrastructure of this scale has an opportunity, or more correctly a responsibility, to create meaningful places in the city. The north segment of the loop passes through the docklands parks. It responds to the history of shipbuilding. The eastern segment of the loop leads to the Yangtze River, to which Jiangyin owes its existence. The greenway path is a scaled model of the Yangtze River and the cities and tributaries alongside are symbolised by plazas and balco-
nies along the greenway. Visitor information explains the larger river story. Stitching The freeway is lifted off the ground for its entire length of the site. Contrary to what one would think, and thanks to the enlightened engineering decision, the freeway is not a barrier in the city, but is a better link than the park by itself. The linear structure of the park emphasising a major north-south connection had actually turned out to be a frustrating barrier to east-west circulation. sb 4/2021