Quarry Garden is located at the center of Shanghai Chen Mountain Botanical Garden, covering an area of 4.26 hectares (10.53 acres). Chen Mountain is isolated in the Garden and is nearly 70 meters (229.7 feet) high.
Its appearance has been greatly destroyed and two east-west quarries are formed between the early 20th Century and the 1980s due to quarrying. One deep pool is left in the west quarry after the hill is explored and excavated into the ground.
This project plans to build one delicate and characteristic horticultural garden by focusing on the west quarry. This Hill was one famous tourist resort in this region historically with a good name of " Chen Mountain Eight Sights".
This project involves the ecological restoration of abandoned quarry and the recovery of five classic sights of the "Chen Mountain Eight Sights" based on the site condition and traditional context.
The quarrying industry has stripped the vegetation cover on the surface layer and altered the landform significantly, causing water and soil loss as well as habitat fragmentation.
Given to rare rock ground, the designer takes the "substruction" strategy and attempts to build a new biocoenosis through reshaping the land form and increasing vegetation cover. As for exposed hills and rock walls, the designer manages to respect the trueness of rock-wall landscape, rather than apply the routine wrapping method.
Under the premise of effective keep-off for safety consideration, the designer adopts the "subtraction" strategy of no intervention and leaves the rock wall to restore by itself under rain, sunshine and other natural conditions.
Enlightened by Chinese landscape painting and classical literature, modern design has been applied to this project to interpret the natural landscape culture of the orient as well as the utopianism of China.
The oriental tradition is different from the western "static" appreciation ways and emphasizes more on visible and visitable "accessible" landscape experience.
Moreover, the "The land of Peach Blossom", a classic literary works considered to describe "the oriental Garden of Eden", has vividly depicted a fishermen's miraculous experience in a Utopia world through a route. As a reflection of oriental natural landscape culture, the designer has copied the scene in the "The land of Peach Blossom" and ensured the visitors to tour and enjoy the landscape through a dramatic route based on the unique land form of the deep pool.
Location: Songjiang District, China
Landscape Architecture: THUPDI & Tsinghua University, Beijing
Engineering Design: Beijing Zhongyuan Engineering Design and Consult Co.
Structural Engineer: Xiaohong He
Client: Construction Headquarter of Shanghai Botanical Garden
Prize: ASLA Honor Award 2012