Airport International Town

The Overseas Chinese Town Airport International Town in Hefei is developed by Hefei OCT Industrial Development and OCT East China Group, with landscape architecture by HWA led by Zou Zhangrong, Chen Jing, Huang Di, He Dan, Zhou Yutong, Rao Jinjin, Yan Jing, Cao Yaping, Yin Hua and Lu Ruting. The design is organized around four attitudes: restraint, warmth, perception and drama. Restraint frames the building as an open book sitting at the water's edge, sunlight entering through a long slit at the crown of an arched roof. Concrete is paired with antique-finish stainless steel, and the texture of aged materials speaks of reason and restraint, while a hidden ceremonial gravitational space inscribes time into the place and produces a stronger memorial presence. The team invokes Louis Kahn's question to a brick, asking what the red brick itself wants to be; layered brickwork radiates an archaic charm, and the visitor is invited to imagine being one of those bricks, crossing time in quiet contemplation. Red-purple sunsets and lake breezes, the blue fusion of water and sky, are the essence of the site, a beauty of life without noise or impurity. Warmth appears when children play and adults slow down for coffee, when neighbors gather and talk and harvest a slow happiness: art and the smell of everyday life, the design argues, are not opposites and can fuse warmly. Where city meets river, something always survives time, and life on the water stages an endless play. Perception follows lines that cross the sky and reach inner poetry, touching the most original human sense; at sunset, when the sun disappears at the end of the stream, the visitor feels the classical fusion of autumn water and long sky. Structures leave marks against the sky, the space remains bare and restrained, resting in a corner in relaxation and stillness. Drama is delivered as pure earth art, a poetic skyline that measures time silently on the horizon, where standing high removes every obstruction and the body and senses wander free, finding calm within the world's impermanence. In the future, the town will weave these fragments of ideal life into a distinct urban memory, quietly changing the place.