Project
Yukou town Agricultural Science and Technology Campus Spatial Planning and Design
This project involves creating a spatial-functional design for an agricultural campus on the east side of Beijing. It is a sub-project under the desired cooperation between Beijing and WUR in terms of knowledge exchange and organization.
The challenge
The planning area in total is 97 ha. and is being developed in accordance with the very strict planning rules in China. These rules mainly come from the national level and, through the eyes of Dutch planners and designers, are very restrictive in attempts to deliver local identity with customization. Fortunately, this design option has been successful and the client is so far happy with the interim results.
Main planning concepts
In the central area of the campus there is the main green structure that connects the planning area with the existing river systems as well as the Yukou village.
Content
In fact, we are designing an area that we would call a business park in the Netherlands. We make a detailed design for the main public structure of the area (15% of 97 ha.) Besides we make an landscape quality book for the planned plots in the area. The intention is that knowledge institutions, companies and government are enabled to establish themselves in the area and work together in knowledge exchange, agricultural innovation, technology, research and development.
It is not yet clear which parties they are. We therefore limit ourselves to the aforementioned master plan for the public areas and a quality book for the plots. Sustainability, climate change and biodiversity are the key issues in the design. For the required knowledge, we have involved a whole range of specialists - WUR wide - in the project.
Related information
The future quality of the Campus is highly dependent on the interpretation of the plots to be issued and the ambitions of the institutes and companies that will set up there. We hope to receive the role of supervisor / designer as a follow-up assignment for the supervision of this and, if possible, to be able to supervise the expansion of Yukou. In fact, this seems necessary to us. Spatial quality is never a one-off drawing for this type of area development. It requires process and quality supervision over a longer period.