Just north of Beijing, between the Great Wall and Yanqi Lake, the Xingfa Cement Plant once fueled China’s construction boom, operating for over two decades before its 2015 closure under the National Air Quality Action Plan. Today, an adjacent quarry that once provided raw materials has been remediated as a 107.5-hectare terraced park that anchors an accompanying 17-acre research campus on the site of the plant.
Where a single willow tree once stood, the valley now supports a vast, layered network of emergent plant communities selected to adapt in rocky, alkaline soils. Native arborvitae stabilize slopes and retain moisture through summer droughts. Legume-producing species enrich the thin soil, while seasonal stands of smoke tree, mulberry, and elm provide canopy and seasonal color. Invasive plants introduced during the site’s industrial era have been cleared and replaced with species that restore soil conditions. On the southwestern end of the site, a seasonal pond has been added to retain stormwater runoff and reduce erosion across the exposed quarry floor.
Paving, walls, and trail edging were constructed using recycled stone and shale. Salvaged conveyor housings and other industrial remnants were embedded into the landscape along the “Trail of Memory,” a pedestrian spine linking the two quarry pits that pays homage to the site’s industrial past. Climbing up a nearby hilltop to an overlook pavilion, a 1.2-kilometer hiking trail provides panoramic views of the surrounding Yan Mountains.
Jeffrey Open Space Park
The Jeffrey Open Space Park represents approximately 96 acres of park and trails, with an average width of 265 ft. The three-mile long spine is designed for passive uses with a network of trails that connect to residential neighborhoods and active recreation parks.
The design process included a series of community workshops to solicit community’s commen...
Martin Luther King Jr. Square Water Quality Demonstration Park
The City of Conway received local and federal grants to create a water quality demonstration park in a flood-prone, one-block area of its downtown to educate the public about Low Impact Development (LID) and Green Infrastructure (GI) methods and how they can enhance water quality. The project transformed a remediated brownfield site, ...
Homecrest Playground
Part of the larger Shore Parkway, an 816.1-acre collection of parks that stretches across Brooklyn and Queens, Homecrest Playground originally opened in 1942 with a baseball field, basketball courts, handball courts, and benches for community use. This park redesign focuses on providing different playground and recreation amenities for surrounding residents. Shanghai EXPO’s Urban Best Practice Area surrounds the Plein Air Museum Park, which chronicles the unique and rich history of the site through objects of art, artifacts, and architecture. The landscape component of the museum park is expressed physically in the form of a Central Park: a gathering space and activity center for the community. The landscape was a...Shanghai EXPO UBPA (Urban Best Practice Area)