Text description provided by the architects
Zhongnan Chunjiang Yue in Gaoping, Nanchong, is a 70,000-square-metre delivered residential landscape on the Jialing River, designed by Sichuan Ledao Landscape and built by Sichuan Luohan Landscape and Sichuan Blu-ray Jingu Environmental. Unlike a temporary demonstration site, a delivered estate must deliver long-term comfort, and the design team built the project on that question. The site faces the Jialing River across 400 metres of frontage, beside a 300-mu natural riverside wetland park and 160,000 square metres of natural landscape. Believing that the simple joy of meeting nature is certain, the design minimises hard landscape and lets plants, river views and spatial transitions compose the scene, building a continuous ecological atrium, a natural play garden and a 400-metre riverside viewing platform. In dense high-rise housing, the entry and atrium carry the highest daily density. A ceremonial stair leads to a hotel-lobby-style entry, and calm water links the image corridor; at night the whole river city glitters with starlight. In the narrow shared atrium, where fire-vehicle access constrains the plan, the team avoided blocky design and used a continuous leisure lawn and loop running track. Generous road widths and changes in paving soften the emptiness of the fire access, turning it into a flexible rectangular square that can host children's play and elders' evening activities. Planting and platforms along roads and atrium edges grow in density and maturity, offering shade in summer and sun in winter. The children's zone deliberately avoids equipment-led design, using native plants, natural materials, sand, timber bridges and understorey curves to invite exploration; in a micro-landform of metasequoia, children's steps become a ruler, and the grove becomes a friend that grows with them. On the slope down to the river, which falls up to 8.9 metres, the designers created two terraced platforms with understorey seating and cantilevered decks. Semi-enclosed shaded passages suddenly open toward the river, and lightweight grasses at the lower level sway in the river wind, dissolving into the distant view. During handover, the developer's and design teams collaborated with children from a Zhongnan charity programme to stage a warm homecoming ritual, keeping the children's drawn scenes of spring, summer, autumn and winter on the site.