Page 51 - Designing Ways 257

landscapes. Conflicting styles, epochs,
and cultural references are reconciled
with a minimalist landscape approach.
China’s real estate market is constantly
changing. Even before the recent
economic meltdown, in part driven by the
collapse of one of China’s largest real estate
developers, focus was shifting toward
redevelopment and upgrading of existing
projects, rather than on expanding into
new and increasingly remote territories.
The MAHA residential park is an example
of this changing mentality in the Chinese
development industry, and as more
and more projects are reimagined, the
Chinese development and associated
design communities will need to grapple
more seriously with how to design by
integrating, rather than erasing, existing
site conditions.

Forest threshold
In most regions of the site, buggy
circulation is pushed to the periphery.
However, in some key areas, the buggies
pass through the centre of the site. In
those areas, it is critical to define a clear
boundary beyond which the buggies
should not venture. A low retaining wall,
punctuated with low heavy stone bollards
marking important entries, demarcates
the boundary of the central forest.
BAM carefully picked the best trees to
plant in the MAHA gardens from sites

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