Text description provided by the architects
The built demonstration area of Vanke Maritime City in Jinwan District, Zhuhai, is a 7,026-square-metre landscape by A&N Shangyuan Landscape for Vanke Zhuhai Enterprise, built by Zhejiang Qishi Landscape. Where the earlier park phase had evoked an island, this phase stages a cruise-ship journey, taking as its prototype Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas, one of the world's largest luxury liners and itself a floating resort that combines dining, lodging, movement, sightseeing, shopping and entertainment. The design extracts deck terraces, sun decks, vitality bars and coconut-grove lounging from the ship and replays them on land. At the entry, a 3.5-by-30-metre indented strip along the municipal sidewalk becomes a linear corner park, using a wave motif to depict the quiet moment of embarkation, with a white-water feature that suggests the ship pushing off through the surf. The second scene narrates the cruise deck itself: pool details, flowing lines and rich spatial layers reproduce a deck-side resort, with a lively swimming pool that hints at life after departure. The third scene, a delicate pavilion shaped like a boat house, doubles as a leisure party bar and the pedestrian management entrance to the pool. The fourth scene extends the pavilion into the residential blocks, linked as coconut-grove green islands that form a quiet, warm living garden, telling the story of passengers disembarking onto the island. Detail work is calibrated to recover authentic cruise-life atmosphere: teak decking at human scale, and terrazzo pool edges hand-cut in flowing cruise lines to ensure a seamless, ship-like feel. The narrative closes with the idea that every ending is a new beginning the future will be written when the liner docks and meets the shore.
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