Turenscape, a highly qualified team with over 500 professionals gives the best quality and a complete package in Architectural Design, Landscape Design, Urban Design, Environmental Design and Engineering. Founded and supervised by Professor Dr Kongjian Yu in 1998, in China, Turenscape has planned and designed more than 300 ecological cities and 1000 landscape projects until now. All these projects are located within 200 cities that cover 600 completed projects.
Innovative and environmentally sound designs offered by Turenscape have received much appreciation and fame around the globe. The project has won many Best Landscape Awards at the World Architecture Festival.
Dr Kongjian Yu believes that traditional urban planning might have led the world to economic development but at the cost of ecological destruction. He stresses on conservation of water into the natural flow. ‘’This will bring life to cities’’, says Dr Kongjian Yu.
Landscape Architecture
Dr Yu always dreamt of making amazingly beautiful gardens in the livable cities landscape by conserving the environment with development in limited spaces and integrating art and ecology. He describes landscape architecture as “The Art of Survival”.
The fact that many cities of China undergo air pollution, water shortage, surface water pollution, underground water pollution and the vanishing of almost 50 wetlands in past years made Dr Yu take the idea to decision-makers at the municipality level and ministers. In this respect, he had delivered about 300 lectures and organized several conferences for potential stakeholders.
The “Big Foot” Revolution
In 2006, Dr Yu proposed the plan to the state to safeguard national ecological security. This plan aimed to initiate the process of ‘national security pattern planning’ and ‘ecological red line regulation’. These two concepts help discover and protect critical landscapes.
The reason for introducing the “Big Foot” Revolution was the fact that ‘natural’ was considered old school and modern infrastructure was very much in demand. But modern or grey infrastructure are examples of little feet that simply lacks resilience and sustainability. The plan includes lacing the grey and green infrastructure together. Cost-effective modules based on traditional farming are designed in a way that they can also combat climate changes.
Sponge City:
Many cities of China face urban flooding due to the monsoon climate. The purpose of this project is to turn cities into giant sponges to save lives. The project adopts natural ways to control water which greatly increase water resilience. It is a simple idea that excludes the use of concrete to control water. Eco-friendly terraces allow land and water to meet; during the dry seasons a terrace is a park for residents but in rainy seasons it can protect the city from flooding by providing a sponge that absorbs the water. Not only it provides protection but can also be used for growing vegetation and creating habitat for the wildlife. Sponge cities also include green walls and rooftops creating permeable pavements and green buildings. Starting from one city, the initiative has taken up to 250 places that are working with Dr Yu and his team.
After being hit by the coronavirus, China also dealt with the worst floods in 20 years that spread from its southwestern interior to the east in the mid-July of 2020. The Ministry of Emergency Management reported that almost 55 million people belonging to 27 villages have suffered floods. In the year of 2014, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development released guidance to initiate ‘sponge cities’. The idea of a sponge city is to retain and clean water as well as to use stormwater as a resource rather than dumping it in the ocean. Sponge city is a holistic idea to create ecological structure making water the main factor.
Parks:
In China, constructed wetlands are an example to control floods and removing nutrients naturally.
Yongning Park also known as “floating garden” is one of the examples of sustainable urban planning. A green sponge in Qunli Stormwater Park serves as a long-lasting solution for development that is designed to protect habitat, aquifer recharge, and also as an entertainment and amusement park for the locals. Another example is beautifully designed, Houtan Park which was constructed on a previous industrial brownfield. It is designed to treat river water through the regenerative living landscape in an appealingly and pleasing way. Mangrove Park in Sanya City is another example of its kind. To build Meshe River’s ecological resilience the grey walls have been removed and the river is once again linked to the ocean. Mangroves were restored and wildlife in the city centre was recovered. The process to restore Mangroves along waterways and coastal shorelines to reduce urban flood risk was quite complicated and risky. Urban debris was recycled and the cut-and-fill technique was used for wetlands for different species of mangroves.