○ Studio Background

This post presents the Spring 2025 studio outcomes of the third-year Adavnced Studio in Architecture at Shenzhen University. The site is Donghu Park in Luohu District and its surroundings, home to the historically significant Dongshen Water Supply Project—built after 1949 to provide water to Hong Kong. Initiated in 1959 as part of Guangdong’s waterworks campaign, the system draws water from Dongguan to the Shenzhen Reservoir, supplying Hong Kong while also serving local needs in water, power, irrigation, and flood control.

This semester's curriculum is divided into two phases: the first focuses on urban design at the park scale, while the second shifts to architectural and site design within a selected 0.25 km² area. Students are expected to engage with thematic agendas such as Lingnan gardens, ecological urbanism, and infrastructure, and translate these into spatial and structural depth—supported by models and drawings.

○ Urban Research and Design

During the urban design phase, students worked in six research groups, engaging in site studies, contextual research, spatial replication, case analysis, operational strategies, and park reprogramming. These exercises helped them understand the historical and geographical background of Donghu Park, observe daily life within the park and surrounding communities, and explore the needs of both visitors and local residents. By learning from relevant precedents—both successes and failures—each group developed distinct strategies for the park’s future. These ideas were then tested through urban design proposals and public space interventions.

Team 1: Revitalization of Donghu Park

In the Donghu Reservoir area of Shenzhen, the rapid expansion of urban space into natural areas has compressed the public spaces available to residents. This shift is not only physical but also reflects a transformation in governance—where natural landscapes are commodified, and public areas are increasingly privatized and commercialized. As Henri Lefebvre noted, urban space carries embedded power dynamics, and as Jiménez emphasized, residents should have the "right to infrastructure." In response, we propose the "Park Revival Plan," which promotes bottom-up spatial practices through community collaboration and open-source governance, aiming to restore the balance between city and nature and reclaim the social value of public space.

Team 2: The patchworks connect cities and parks

Over sixty years of development have increasingly disconnected Donghu Park from the greater Luohu area, highlighting the need for new connections. Focusing on urban fabric, we designed three east–west connective bands through a process of collage. A north–south axis links these bands together, forming a new structural framework for the park—a patchwork space that reconnects city and landscape.

Team 3: Breaking Growth:  Boundaries into Passages

Due to fragmented jurisdiction, natural terrain, reservoir management, and safety concerns, Donghu Park is enclosed by numerous walls and boundaries. These divisions have led to internal congestion, disrupted airflow, low utilization of public spaces, and the fragmentation of the park into isolated, non-public enclaves. Through boundary research, our design transforms these edges into passageways—reimagining Donghu Park as a continuous, accessible public landscape.

Team 4: Ripples Repair Plan

The Donghu Park renewal is key to fostering Shenzhen–Hong Kong integration and balancing east–west urban development. The plan calls for improved road networks (e.g., Shawan Road, Yanhe South Road), cross-border bus services, and better Liantang Port access. It also promotes walkability and connections to nearby areas like Dawang Village. By leveraging cultural heritage and eco-tourism, the project aims to attract residents, boost consumption, and enhance public space. Strict protection of the Shenzhen Reservoir’s ecological redline ensures a balance between conservation and development—shaping an eastern urban green core that complements the tech-driven west.

Team 6:  Water Weaves Memories

This urban design is guided by the core concept of “dual symbiotic narratives,” restoring two key storylines: “community memory” and the “Dongshen water artery.” A water-guiding strategy strengthens the memory axis, helping to clarify circulation, define the park’s center, and restructure its spatial organization. The goal is to transform Donghu Park into an ecological memory corridor for eastern Shenzhen, upgrading it from a single-function park into a dual system that integrates cultural revival and natural ecology.

○ Public Space & Architectural Design

The reservoir’s water storage gave rise to Donghu Park, which has become a site of everyday life and collective memory for local residents. Within the park and its surroundings are diverse spatial types, including the historic Donghu Hotel, a water plant, dam and other hydraulic infrastructures, elevated roads, the Shenzhen Art Museum, exhibition galleries, aging resettlement communities, a planned metro station, pump stations, sports facilities, a zoo, botanical garden, and a kindergarten. Students are free to choose their topics and sites based on personal interest, and to draft their own project briefs. As long as their design responds to real issues with sufficient justification, they are encouraged to go beyond the suggested boundaries—developing the ability to identify “small projects” within a “larger context.”

Type A：Everyday Infrastructure

The design draws inspiration from the essence of “water” in Donghu, reimagining the pump station from a purely functional infrastructure into a waterfront settlement that integrates ecology, culture, and a strong sense of place. Using the structural language of “arched pipelines” and the fluid form of “waves,” the project envisions an architectural cluster floating above the water.

Integrating architecture, urban design, and the surrounding landscape, the project creates a series of connected plazas and two primary street spaces. Through water features, stepped terraces, and colonnades that echo the environment, it forms a pump station cultural center that breathes in harmony with nature.

This project reimagines the pump station as a public space that blends with the park. It keeps its function while adding water features and trees, linking east–west routes. The raised, light-filled ground floor allows for educational displays, turning a grey utility into a lively spot where people, nature, and architecture come together.

The entrance area of Donghu Park and the Dongshen Water Supply zone have rich landscape resources but lack overall vitality. This project uses small, lightweight units to form a flowing looped path, which serves as a framework to extend activity spaces and visual corridors—activating and enhancing the area's vibrancy.

Type B: Garden & Nature

To meet the park’s daily camping needs, a modular urban camping oasis is created next to the nursery area in Shenzhen’s Donghu Park. Blending natural wilderness with refined comfort, the design adapts to the climate through modularity and natural ventilation, creating a luxury outdoor retreat with tiered parking management.

Located in the animal zone of Donghu Park, the project rethinks traditional caged exhibits by showcasing native species in naturalistic habitats. The redesigned area expands beyond display to integrate wildlife rescue, education, and everyday leisure, transforming it into a more open and inclusive park space.

The project is located on Shigeng Hill in Shenzhen’s Donghu Park. With minimal intervention to the natural terrain, it weaves a winding exploration path through the native forest, encouraging visitors to slow down and engage with the landscape.

At the junction of the hill and dam, the site carries the memory of the Dongshen Water Supply Project. The design seeks to reinterpret and extend this cultural memory, linking past, present, and future. New accessible pathways are introduced to improve connectivity and turn movement into a scenic experience. The architecture responds to the terrain, using buildings and corridors to frame a central plaza, enhance public activity, and create viewing points that open up to the surrounding landscape.

This project renovates the Bonsai World dormitories in Donghu Park by preserving the original vertical walls to create a sequence of spaces, while adding horizontal openings to enhance transparency. New and old materials are blended, with lightweight updates on the second floor. The building opens in multiple directions to connect with green spaces, transforming the formerly closed management rooms into open public areas through a “light intervention” approach—supporting exhibitions, relaxation, and activities.

The design features a flowing curved surface that extends along the boundary between two residential areas and the park. It optimizes fences on both sides to reduce barriers, enhancing views, accessibility, and interaction between the park and neighborhoods.

Shenzhen Art Museum (Donghu Branch) suffers from low visibility and steep, closed mountain paths, resulting in few visitors. To address this, a connecting bridge and escalators are added along the sluice axis. An art market is designed on the hillside next to the abandoned buildings on the west side. Layered eaves and corridors enhance visual guidance, drawing visitors into the historic museum.

Type C: Field & Connection

Yanfang Road separates Donghu Park and Yuehai Sports Park. The design aims to create a new space that connects the two parks.

The project renovates the Dongshen Sports Center to address parking shortages within the neighborhood, which is separated from the park by rigid boundaries. The proposal creates a multifunctional parking structure that breaks down the barrier with Donghu Park, revitalizing the original neighborhood parking area.

After the completion of Donghu Park Metro Station (TOD), Dongshen Neighborhood will be transformed as a new park entrance. The project adopts a pedestrian-vehicle separation model, with a commercial walkway on the second floor to the north and park access to the south. The former sports center is renovated into a public core area, and a landmark entrance on the southeast side guides visitors via the second-floor walkway directly to Donghu Park Plaza.

Located southwest of the art museum, the basin has long been disconnected from its space due to an isolated, inactive S-shaped path. This design transforms the basin into a theater-like interactive plaza enclosed by circular steps, creating a two-way visual relationship between the building and the square. The new path seamlessly connects to the museum, forming a natural transition from interaction to art. Terraces serve as exhibition and seating areas, while the plaza becomes a stage for public art—extending artistic experiences from the gallery into the open landscape.

The same mountains and waters have drawn both ancient and modern visitors to climb and gaze. With the passage of time and the presence of life and death, these places take on commemorative meaning. Reviving the site's memory is not just about restoring a physical high ground in the park—but reestablishing a cultural one.

The original triangular entrance plaza at the park’s west gate once served as a key north-south landscape connection but was later divided by a parking lot, causing spatial imbalance and concentrating activities on the south side. This design restructures the plaza’s connectivity, reopening the north-south axis, improving facilities, and creating a multifunctional public space for all ages—enhancing overall vitality and safety.

This design aims to break physical and functional barriers by carefully organizing several traffic routes serving the parking lot, the adjacent kindergarten, and the park’s main entrance, creating an interwoven yet non-interfering path system.

○ Lectures

From urban design to architectural design, each phase of the course was accompanied by lectures and case studies delivered by experts in relevant fields. These sessions offered students the opportunity to engage directly with professionals, ask questions, and gain insights into topics such as infrastructure renewal, the construction of Lingnan gardens, and strategies for urban operations and planning.

Doreen Heng Liu, Jing Xiao, Yu Yan, Ken Chen, Sophia Leoni

Final Review Jurors

Yue Fan, Hang Cheng, Bofan Zeng

Mid-Review Jurors

Guochuan Feng, Hang Cheng

Content Edit

Ken Chen, Yu Yan

Post Review

Doreen Heng Liu, Jing Xiao