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Data-Driven Analysis + Strategic Planning
We provide strategic planning across various scales with data-based evidences. To understand the exceedingly complex urban environment requires planners and designers to rely on both quantitative and qualitative approaches. We use data-driven analysis to scrutinize the problems and opportunities in cities and hence supporting planning strategies.
Harbin HMCT Urban Regeneration Project
Harbin, China
2019
Team: Helena Rong, Tony Yang, Will Wu
"Xiangfang Valley" is a place that carries Harbin's industrial history and social collective memory. It is also an innovation hub of Harbin where talents gather and future development happens. Traditional factory renovation design often leads to transformation through the introduction of the cultural industry and further the tourism industry. Instead of simply focusing on the cultural innovation program, the planning and design of Xiangfang Valley emphasize the creation of employment, the protection of the history, the attraction of the talents, and drive of the tourism through the power of technological innovation.
We see the entire design as an old city transformation model driven by the power of technology and innovation. Through this series of transformations, we hope to see the entry of innovative technology companies to provide a large number of high-tech oriented employment opportunities, economic talent apartments for settled talents to solve housing needs; innovative technology products show the protection of the tourism economy throughout the year, and stimulate the price of surrounding areas; technology exhibitions attract a large number of technology innovation companies to settle in Xiangfang Valley, increasing investment opportunities.
Alongside urban design and planning , the Xiangfang Valley proposes a simultaneous development of a digital layer of the city which includes a suite of products, such as apps and web portals aimed at enhancing urban life, opportunities for innovation and management of resources and efficiency. Focusing on five aspects: Live, Work, Play, Learn and Invest, the Xiangfang Valley digital portal provides comprehensive service to residents and visitors access to key resources and programs available on the site.
Shanghai Minsheng Wharf Urban Resilience Design
Shanghai Pudong New District, China
2018
Team: Helena Rong, Tony Yang, Will Wu
Addressing environmental challenges and development opportunities at Minsheng Wharf, this project aims to combine conceptual and scientific methods in urban design and planning, and foreground a new urban condition – Living Lifeline – contingent upon a group of protective, resilient boundaries between water and land. Integrating berms, permanent and deployable seawalls, and permeable wetland, Living Lifeline does not aim to protect as much land as possible, but as a strategic marker which differentiates areas of up-zoning (increased urban intensity) with areas of downzoning (return to green space and recreational use). As a marker, the Living Lifeline functions as the primary access point by which floodable areas are connected to those that are protected by its existence.
This process of up-zoning and down-zoning support several critical hinge points along the line – Minsheng Ferry Station, Warehouse 257 (Art Exhibition), Silo (Art Gallery), Warehouse 258 (Performance Center), Warehouse 273 (Boutique Hotel and Office), and a new wetland park (retention site). In this way, the design proposal creates opportunities for new functions and integrated programming between floodable and protected. Together, these components form a cohesive whole, connected by the berm, where before there were only scattered elements. They create a new form of urbanism which dramatically improves the quality of life in Minsheng Wharf.
Post Industrial Resilience Design
Chelsea, MA, USA
2017
Design Lead: Helena Rong
Can city, Industry and nature co-exist? Can they strengthen one another in a resilient urbanism?
The Chelsea Creek is an eco-industrial corridor that is an integrated system of city, nature, and industry. Strategic sites along the corridor are developed which become new nodes for local commerce & new housing, ecological industries, regional education, and national recreation in response to sea level rise and increased chances for flooding. Three design principles emerge as the resiliency approach of working with the water:
1) Inland interventions uses resiliency planning as an opportunity to shape urban character
2) Safe fails ensures redundancy and compartmentalization to create multiple lines of defense and decentralize risk
3) Framing the future through the past uses pre-existing conditions as opportunities to educate and shift cultural attitudes towards sea level rise, risk, and resilience.
Bermanism: Line as Center
Chelsea, MA, USA
2017
Design Lead: Tony Yang, Will Wu
A wall is a simple object. It serves as a marker - a line, which defines what is in, what is out. Who is included, and who is excluded. Lines are divisive and political. Resiliency and climate adaptation planning have historically used the berm or the seawall to protect as much as possible, especially in urban areas. To oversimplify this process is dangerous. Too often, the drawing of the line excludes or further marginalizes those who have been lined, red-lined, or outlined in the past. It may also preserve legacies of environmental injustice and inequity.
As designers and planners, we have agency and responsibility in where and how we draw this line. In industrial cities, the legacies of distribution, degradation, and ownership of the waterfront cannot be solved by maximizing the square footage of protected land. How can this deceptively simple process of ‘drawing the line’, encourage a more nuanced discussion around the question, ‘what should we protect?’ in an era of climate uncertainty and risk. We explore this concept in the context of Chelsea, MA, a coastal-industrial city grappling with sea level rise and changing social and economic realities. Instead of seeing water as a threat, we can consider water as an asset - the line we propose becomes less about keeping water in or out but rather about creating opportunities for new projects on either side; new industry, new recreation, new remediation, which would otherwise be impossible.
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