archatlas:

Floating Fields in a Small Urban Park in China

Floating Fields by Thomas Chung is premised on a vision for ‘Re-Living The City’, speculating on a place-based bio-social urbanism. It aspires to an alternative, organic living based on reinvigorating post-industrial architecture by creating enjoyable public space through a productive edible landscape, at the same time reviving the roots of the polyculture ecology (multiple agri + aqua-cultures) that once defined the unique territorial landform of the Pearl River Delta. The project forms the major landscape piece for the Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture UABB (SZ) 2016.

The series of connected ponds holding various aquatic functions create a complete ecological water cycle that wraps around the old dormitory, a linear block which has itself been converted into a multi-use learning resource centre with exhibition, roundtable space, library and a café restaurant. A contemporary version of the dyke-pond cultivation is combined with low-tech aquaponics; mulberry trees are grown to feed cocoon-spinning silkworms inside a pavilion; the waterway inspires a corridor of filtering ponds with water-cleansing plants and grasses for fish feed; and colourful micro-algae is expertly cultivated and harvested to enhance the water purification and produce fish feed.

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