Water Culture Ecological Park

The Changchun Water Culture Ecological Garden is an urban-regeneration project on the site of the old Changchun water treatment plant, designed by W&A Design and Zhongbang Landscape for the Changchun Construction Committee and Changchun City Investment, built by Zhongqing and Zhongbang. Across a 300,000-square-meter site with 50,000 square meters of buildings, the project respects historical fabric above all: of the plant's more than eighty original structures, eighteen are protected buildings from the Manchukuo period and are carefully restored. Through cultural reconstruction and adaptive reuse, the water-treatment industrial heritage is transformed into landscape, while rainwater is guided by terrain into terraced rain gardens and the internal structure of the old settling pools is preserved and programmed as multi-use garden rooms. The team refused wholesale demolition or grading, protecting original site materials and features and reusing relics within the new landscape; retired machine tools and components have become sculptural highlights that echo the industrial vocabulary and dialogue with new art installations. Citing Aldo Rossi on architecture and collective memory, the designers argue that if the old plant gave Changchun a shared memory of its water-supply culture, the new ecological garden will give the city a fresh civic imprint that fuses history and modernity, industry and ecology. Built between 2016 and 2018, the project stands at the intersection of Yatai Avenue and Fanrong Road.