With the amount of architectural phenomena China's churning out these days, it can be tough for decent renderings to garner any sort wow factor. The market is just glutted with all manner of wackadoo designs, from car-free "Great Cities" to the world's next tallest building to alien/pinecone towers. Still, these renderings for an urban oasis in Changsha, Hunan, to be built from scratch by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) stand out. An "experiment in future city planning," this lakeside city lets the architects play with neighborhood structure, flood prevention systems, and urban agriculture, all the while housing 180,000 residents—that's 100,000 more people than accounted for in China's other planned pop-up city. KPF's press release calls the Meixi Lake project "a live test case"—always a reassuring phrase when talking about urban architecture—designed to integrate nature into densely populated cityscapes. The city—described as "actually happening" by a spokesperson—will be organized by neighborhood pods, each housing about 10,000 people, with a school, shopping center, and other public spaces in each town-like structure. The plan, proposed five years ago, is intriguing, though the verdict's still out on whether it has enough pie-in-the-sky details to be make it into the selective club of most outlandish cities of the future. More below.
· All Architectural Craziness coverage [Curbed National]
· KPF Releases Masterplan for Chinese City Built From Scratch [ArchDaily]
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