Text description provided by the architects
The Xiong'an High-Quality Living Experimental Zone sits east of Rongcheng Jinhai Avenue, north of the starting area, as a pre-built demonstration section ahead of large-scale construction. It showcases green, smart-city living and convenient neighborhood functions to outside visitors, relocated residents and local people, and serves as a template covering planning, design, material selection and construction methods. Xiong'an New Area spans Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin counties and the 360-square-meter Baiyangdian wetland, rich in ecology and village culture. The landscape draws on the local Baiyangdian-dian as a design language, organizing hall, garden and courtyard layers around nostalgia and green-smart positioning, integrated with an urban exhibition hall and residential ground-floor shops. The future living room opens at the entry plaza, anchored by a Smart Tree specimen combining solar technology, its lotus-pod form derived from Baiyangdian lotus and symbolizing the new area's vitality. To the west, an ecological park bleeds into the plaza through dian-shaped planting islands with seating. The sunken living plaza hosts community lectures, open-air films and markets; its steps embed steel plates carved with original village names. A 260-year-old scholar tree was transplanted to the lower plaza, ringed by annual-growth paving that becomes a nostalgia memory point. The northwest rain garden is both educational and participatory, connected to the park's grass slope; rainwater stagnates, purifies and infiltrates through terraces into a touchable collection pool, then feeds the exhibition-hall rain garden for groundwater recharge. Two systems show natural and simulated rain paths, using water-tolerant plants. Through the neighborhood gate lies the future residential courtyard, restoring village gathering spaces, using pervious exposed-aggregate paving and dozens of native species that serve as a future planting sample library. Smart lockers, access control and security systems demonstrate smart living. The red-crowned crane playground uses the Baiyangdian crane as its IP, exploiting the sunken level to connect ground and basement with slides, climbing and crawling. The east street features unmanned shops and smart sorting bins with point rewards. Over 60 percent of the site is pervious, reducing storm-sewer load and shortening plant establishment.