Urban Forest

By the end of 2009, MAD has completed the concept design of a 385 meter high metropolitan cultural complex in the city center of Chongqing – The Urban Forest. This is the third skyscraper designed by MAD following the Absolute Towers in Toronto and the Sinosteel International Plaza in Tianjin, China. Canadian Absolute Towers is being completed, but the Urban Forest on the MAD Architects website still belongs to the category of proposed works, although originally planned to raise it to 2011. MAD proposes a new architectural concept for the course of Chinese urban development to actualize a sustainable multidimensional high-rise within China’s youngest municipality, where nature reincorporates into the high-density urban environment in the near future, to evoke the affection for nature once lost in the oriental ancient world and bring to the modern city dwellers.

In the year of 1997, Chongqing became the fourth direct municipality in China. It has a population approaching 7.5 million people, and together with the administrative district reaches 35 million. Such macro-scale urbanization should not only pushes economic growth and material prosperity, but also foster the evolution of the city’s cultural essence. Chinese cities have gone through the process of once starting from nothing, to following contemporary Western civilization urban pattern. Now, the overall economic infrastructure has oriented the direction of future development towards inland China. What lies in the future of cities?

How should one grasp the concept of emerging high-density cities of China in the context of a scenic town such as Chongqing? How does one discuss the future of architecture in Chinese cities on the base of Eastern Naturalist perspective and in the new context of China’s unique economic, social environment and globalization background? How to engage the city dwellers with an experience of nature when its presence of steadily diminishes in the face of the ever intensifying concrete jungle. The fusion between Eastern humanism spirit and urban public spaces pioneers in the making of a sustainable multidimensional city. The Urban Forest will not be a piece of mediocre urban machinery, but an artificial organ that lives and breathes new life in the steel-and-concretefilled city center.

Urban Forest
Location: Chongqing, China
Typology: Commercial, Office, Hotel
Site Area: 7,700 sqm
Building Area: 216,000 sqm
Building Height: 385 m
Architectural Design: MAD Ltd
Structural Design: ARUP Group Ltd
Directors in Charge: Ma Yansong, Dang Qun
Design Team: Yu Kui, Diego Perez, Zhao Wei, Chie Fuyuki, Fu Changrui, Jtravis B Russett, Dai Pu, Irmgard Reiter, Rasmus Palmqvist, Qin Lichao,
Xie Xinyu

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Materials provided by MAD Architects