Water-Based Urban Park Enhances a District 
{"autoplay":"true","autoplay_speed":"8000","speed":"1000","arrows":"true","dots":"false","loop":"true","nav_slide_column":5,"rtl":"false"}
{"autoplay":"true","autoplay_speed":"8000","speed":"1000","arrows":"true","dots":"false","loop":"true","nav_slide_column":5,"rtl":"false"}

DETAILS

LocationNanhai, China
ClientGuangdong Nanhai Planning Bureau
Size97 hectares

Nanhai Citizen’s Plaza and Thousand Lantern Lake Park exemplifies the exciting and innovative opportunities for master planning and urban design in new international communities. The site is located in the newly established city of Nanhai, and consists of a commercial precinct, public parks, and civic buildings arranged around a series of lakes and waterways. The waterways act as the connecting element between the larger site, providing transportation networks that run through the entire park. The centerpiece of the park, Citizen’s Plaza on Thousand-Lantern Lake, provides an active public gathering space that transitions from day to night with unique streetscape and lighting elements. The relatively blank canvas allowed for SWA to create a master plan that will be able to grow over time and inspire and connect the city of Nanhai well into the future.

Related Projects

Griggs Park Redevelopment

Griggs Park, a historically important open space located in Uptown Dallas, had not kept pace with the ever-evolving culture and artistic neighborhood surrounding it. The new design reflects the changes in urban uses for the now-vibrant neighborhood. Established in the 1940s, the park is the first dedicated to an African American in Dallas. It transitioned with...

NOAH Ethnographic Village

Armenia has set an initiative to increase global tourism and develop a site within its capital city with majestic views of Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark is purported to have landed. SWA developed a strategic plan based on several principles derived from the existing context of the site: first, to capitalize its proximity to important landmarks that allow for ...

Bayou Greenways

As one of the largest U.S. cities, Houston’s sprawling, car-centric infrastructure is underpinned by a vast arterial system of over 2,500 miles of bayous—an untapped ecological feature that could redefine urban life.

Recognizing this potential, the Houston Parks Board worked alongside SWA to develop a visionary plan for nine central bayous as an i...

Evelyn’s Park

In honor of their late matriarch Evelyn, the Rubenstein family donated a historically and geographically prominent five-acre tract on the busy Bellaire Boulevard and created a conservancy to fund a public park with primarily private funds, while engaging the public in its design and development. This park seeks to be reflective and adaptive to the local cultur...

Great Park

One of the world’s largest municipal parks, the 1,300-acre Great Park in Irvine, California, is currently under construction with phased openings continuing through 2029. The conceptual framework encompasses redesign and implementation of near- and longer-term uses, with the intent to “put the park back into the park.” The vast site, which was once the Marine ...

Park 101

The ambitious Park 101 aims to cover part of downtown Los Angeles’ 101 Freeway with a multi-purpose park that will include playgrounds, seating, festival areas, and a plaza. The approximately four-block cap park will reconnect the two sections of Downtown that have long been separated by the freeway, greatly enhancing the currently noisy, with much-needed shad...

Resonant Memory: One October Memorial

Inspired by the shared love of country music that brought people from all over the world together for the Route 91 Music Festival, Resonant Memory is based on the shape of an acoustic guitar. The design makes particular use of the instrument’s sound hole as a recurring motif to represent absence, honoring the lives lost on October 1, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada...

East Blocks

50 years in the making, East Blocks envisions a new mixed-use neighborhood spanning 10 blocks of EaDo near Downtown Houston—building. Located within an already diverse, eclectic, and walkable arts and entertainment district, the design celebrates the neighborhood’s history as an industrial hub.

East Blocks will be developed in a multiphase process over ...