Qun Li Wetland Park

In mid-2009, Turenscape was commissioned to design a 34.2-hectare wetland park in the center of a new city, designated as a protected wetland. Surrounded by roads and dense development, the wetland's water source had been cut off, threatening degradation and disappearance. Turenscape's strategy was to transform the dying wetland into a green sponge, an urban stormwater park that not only rescues the wetland but creates urban ecological infrastructure with multiple services. The challenge is clear: how to preserve a wetland whose ecology and hydrology have been severed by urban development? How can such an urban wetland provide multiple ecosystems to the city? How to solve this complex landscape economically? The answer is to convert the wetland into a multi-functional stormwater park that collects, filters and stores rainwater, letting it infiltrate aquifers while offering new recreational and aesthetic experiences through mounded paths and wetland cells. The park has become a model for sponge-city design, demonstrating how a threatened wetland can be saved, cleaned and opened to the public in the heart of a new district.