Text description provided by the architects
Vanke Huasheng Park Avenue in Qiaokou District, Wuhan, occupies part of old Hankou, a city that enjoyed extraordinary prosperity in the Republican era and retains a solemn, generous urban character. Developed by Wuhan Vanke and landscaped by A&N Shangyuan Landscape (Shi Rui, Li Shijie; 57,077 square metres), the design translates a French classical estate through modern techniques, drawing on Versailles to create a contemporary artistic asset. Five spatial movements build a ritual homecoming sequence, and three art gardens express landscape elegance through high-customized planting. The design follows the French emphasis on axis, symmetry, proportion and hierarchy, using broad promenades as transparent sight lines. The first act meets French romance at the main gate, whose Metropolitan-style elevation follows the ordered symmetry of American classicist Robert A. M. Stern and uses arched openings that carry millennial architectural memory. The second act praises classical elegance through the Sinfonie Garden, an allee of upright beech trees linking the main entrance to sub-district entries, extending the axial promenade with rich vertical layering. The third act salutes axial ritual through trimmed vegetation, open lawns and witty sculptural pieces that alternate solid and void. The fourth act opens the Forbada art garden, where natural green plays against playground orange in a bright but calm palette. The fifth act reconstructs the classical through geometric paving, hedges and clipped shrub spheres at the characteristic side entrance. Detail is pursued on site through repeated visits, and a signature flower border of star jasmine on both sides of feature walls gives a long flowering season and a delicate fragrance along the homecoming path. The project concludes that a small break from rule-bound order is exactly where romantic everyday life is found.
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