Guitou Town Wetland Park / YXDesigners

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Harnessing Solar Energy - Solar technology is seamlessly embedded within the design of the park's architectures and boardwalk. Photovoltaic panels form a continuous roof, their undulating shapes echoing the ripples of the Wujiang River. The panels are precisely angled at 17 degrees southward to maximize solar energy absorption, providing clean energy for the park.After multiple extensive discussions with the local governments of Ruyuan County and Guitou Town, Vanke Group (the funding entity), and Vanke Urban Research Institute (the design management team), we collectively resolved to transform this wetland into a wetland park. The goal is to provide the local community with a public space that coexists harmoniously with nature. Despite its official designation as "Guitou Town Cultural Park," the name resonates profoundly—generations of villagers here have coexisted with mountains and rivers, embodying a broader 'culture' rooted in human-nature interdependence. The design of the wetland park seeks to crystallize this ecological beauty, transforming neglected natural landscapes into focal points for exploration and appreciation.Our primary intervention is to implement limited modifications to the existing shoreline, preserving the floodplain's natural flood discharge function while reinforcing it with riprap reinforcement to prevent soil erosion. Simultaneously, we establish a recreational system adaptable to varying water levels, using durable, low-maintenance materials to construct boardwalks and paths at different elevations. Even during peak flood conditions, the park remains fully operational. It acts as a living hydrometer, calibrating the pulse of natural water rhythms. This resilient design not only enhances the site's adaptability but also renders nature's rhythms legible to visitors. Human-Made Structures in Harmony with Nature - The entrance complex and plaza adopt a humble silhouette toward the roadway, while strategically orienting expansive vistas toward the natural landscape.Diverse Activities and Community Engagement - The park grants motorcycle access, allowing people to traverse directly to the boardwalk terminus for immersive landscape engagement. This intentional mobility strategy leverages motorcycles—the town's lifeline transportation—to catalyze spontaneous nature immersion, interweaving ecological appreciation into everyday life. Although the Wujiang River has always been part of this landscape, its beauty is now truly seen by the villagers for the first time. The network looped trail system, and stepping-stone pathways through reed beds serve dual purposes: curated corridors for jogging/walking and strategic wildlife observation platforms (avian and entomofauna studies). Decommissioned construction pilings were upcycled into play structures and interactive environmental education stations, transforming the riverfront into an outdoor discovery lab for Guitou Primary School. Flood-adaptive concrete pavilions operate seasonally as camping hubs and kayak docks, while ecologically engineered riprap revetments have become popular spots for fishing and collecting snails.Site Transformation Strategies -  Guitou Town lies along the Wujiang River, where abundant rainfall in spring and summer leads to frequent flooding, with water level fluctuations by up to 4 meters between flood and normal conditions. To combat flooding, the town center has built high embankments along the river, which, while protecting the land, have severed the connection between people and water. The hardening of the riverbanks has also narrowed the river channel and eliminated flood buffer zones. Thus, the core challenge of the design lies in how to coexist with flooding, creating an adaptable public space that allows people to perceive the rhythms of nature.Text description provided by the architects.Guitou Town Wetland Park is located in Guitou Town, Ruyuan Yao Autonomous County,ShaoguanCity, Guangdong Province, and represents a significant endeavor by YXDesigners in the region. During the urban design collaboration with Vanke Urban Research Institute, we identified a natural wetland along the Wujiang River in Guitou Town. This wetland is frequently submerged during flood seasons, with severe soil erosion making it unsuitable for agricultural development, thus remaining an overlooked "wilderness." However, this very "untamed" quality has preserved its pristine ecological attributes—dense native vegetation, rich biodiversity, and unparalleled vistas of mountainous and aquatic landscapes.Epilogue - The design of Guitou Town Wetland Park stems from a profound reverence for nature's legacy. This floodplain wetland, long overlooked as a natural sanctuary, now transforms into a living observatory where ecological processes become tangible. Through calibrated interventions, we preserved site-specific ecologies while weaving infrastructure that amplifies nature's agency—a public realm where engineered and organic systems coalesce. The park is not merely a place to enjoy the scenery but also a space for people to rediscover and perceive the changes in nature. Here, the boundaries between human-made structures and nature are blurred, redefining the relationship between humans and the environment. We aspire for this landscape to perpetuate Guitou's ecological ethos, ensuring nature's poetic intelligence endures as collective heritage.To maintain accessibility during flood seasons, an elevated boardwalk system was implemented. Unfolding along the Wujiang River, the boardwalk provides panoramic views, with its underside colonnade functioning as a rain-sheltered promenade. The colonnade's textural stonework employs a deliberately crude tectonic language, evoking an archaeological sensibility of structures organically fused with the terrain—as if these elements had always coexisted with the riverine ecology. Three cantilevered observation decks, inspired by the stilt-house vernacular of local villages, extend from the primary walkway. At dusk, the boardwalk metamorphoses into a "Starlight Bridge," with its surface embedded with luminous inlays that choreograph a celestial interplay with the night sky. Throughout the design, we prioritized minimal earthwork, preserving existing topographies, habitats, and native flora, with three strategic detention basins carved centrally. These basins transition into ephemeral wetland gardens following floods or storms, nurturing self-sustaining semi-aquatic plant communities. Collectively, these interventions dissolve the boundary between artifice and ecology, positioning the park as a mediator of human-nature discourse.