Modular Park | Empathizing with History to Forge a New Urban Emblem
In 2019, with the opening of the Beijing–Zhangjiakou high-speed railway—a key transport guarantee for the 2022 Winter Olympics—Zhangjiakou South Station became the city's new hub, and the North Station, after more than a century of service, stepped back with its mission complete. This once-thriving, hard-driving industrial stronghold had long lost its function and status, reduced to a messy, overgrown ruin. The government decided to redesign the area as a public landscape space to improve residents' living environment.
When we carefully examine this stretch of abandoned vacant land in Zhangjiakou, we see weathered railroad ties, rust-stained freight cars, large industrial machines long out of use yet still imposing, and factory halls that once roared and now stand silent… These objects and places are like a group of retirees: quiet at first meeting, but if you sit down and talk with them, you hear stretch after stretch of vivid, living history.
In this design, we largely retained the complete railway. Following the two main rail alignments still on site, the park takes a Y-shaped layout: the east–west axis is a cultural axis presenting Zhangjiakou's industrial history; the north–south axis is a sports axis that, tied to the Winter Olympics theme, takes a sports and leisure park as its main program. Where the two axes meet is the Locomotive Culture Plaza.
As the landscape's core highlight, Locomotive Culture Plaza occupies the former Nankou freight yard. Our design centers on the original tracks and a 46-meter-tall abandoned water tower. With the rails as the central axis, four zones run from north to south—the Olympic Tree, the Locomotive Fountain Plaza, the Gantry Crane Theme Zone, and the Slim-Waist Cultural Zone—flanked by under-canopy spaces of ginkgo and ash.
We also used shipping containers, water-supply pipes, railroad ties, and old city bricks to build a cafe leisure area that blends heavy industrial character with modern fashion. The deep black of the ties, the vivid orange-red of the gantry crane, and the sturdy, powerful mechanical equipment express the rugged civilization of the heavy-industry era.
Balancing the bold, richly drawn style of the history axis, the north–south sports-themed park is lighter and more lively in design. The site's two original urban rail lines were retained; with night lighting added, they shape a fast path and a slow path across the whole north–south park, and a colored asphalt running track was laid along the rails to unify the north–south park.
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