The Suzhou Longfor Paradise Walk has won the 2022 AMP Award in the Commercial Landscape category. In the pursuit of creating animated public life, the design imagines a series of moon-themed narrative spaces that are integrated with the configuration of theater typologies, reconceptualizing multiplicity of public realm that elevates human participation and experiences.

Cultural Relationship with the Moon

The project is a community-based commercial complex located on the banks of Yangcheng Lake in China. The retail development is divided by a waterway, with a larger west block and a central courtyard plaza facing towards it. The east block is long and narrow, serving as a children's activity center.

Yangcheng Lake is famous for its long-standing culture of crab-eating during Chinese Mid-autumn Festival, also known as the Mooncake Festival. It is a time of year in Chinese culture for appreciating the moon and for celebrating family, with families and friends gathering together during the mid-autumn festival to observe the moon. The fast-paced world of Chinese development calls for a modern interpretation of the reminiscence of traditions, which inspired the design team to articulate the landscape that focuses on a re-interpretation of the moon. 

Stage-Audience Relationship

Appreciation of the moon is fundamentally a stage-audience relationship, just like the essence in every successful public realm that encourages interaction and participation in its celebration of public life. Through spatial studies, the design team found an intriguing correlation with theater typology and the commercial public realm, where both seek to celebrate formal and informal interactions through the design of  spatial configurations and carefully articulated sightlines and views.

The celebration of public life is built upon ensuring inclusion and diversity, and the design hopes to contribute to that by acknowledging shared experiences of local traditions, while also integrating a series of multi-functional and

inter-relational spaces that encourage people to socialize, play, observe, and rest.

Repertoire of the Moon in Theaterism Approach

The moon becomes the theme which the design team begins to cultivate onto the canvas. Through spatial abstractions of theater studies, moon-themed typologies are incorporated into appropriate locations suited to the characteristics of the program, weaving unique and culturally relevant inter-relationships together.

The iteration of the moon concept seeks to express a dynamic landscape that appears to be constantly changing, just like the amount of moon that we see over the course of the month during different lunar phases. The changes of lunar phases becomes an integral design of the moon plaza stage, which is the focal theater at the center of the project. The dry fountain is programmed to have multiple scenarios of interaction according to different lunar phases - full moon, crescents, and eclipses create a highly participatory stage that is popular among children and families during weekends. At different times of the month, it can also be transformed into other flexible uses for temporary pop-up stores or stage performances.

Due to the attraction of the moon, tides of the earth come and go consistently with the lunar cycle. The design team incorporates the tidal language into the design of the waterfront, activating uses of the outdoor landscape and forming a series of unique theatrical mini-stages along the waterway. While visitors stroll along the bankside, they are always actively engaged with these pocket mini-stages. Close to the heart of the project, a stepping theater provides informal performance stage along the bankside. Seating steps integrated with planting also become a popular recreation area for local residents. There are also a series of other narrow stages along the rest of the waterfront. The tides are articulated into dynamic landscape furnishings with an undulating composition. The spatiality of the composition allows multiplicity of unprescribed opportunities for leaning, sitting, observing, and informal play. Next to the children's activity center, there is also a designated area for child activities. The design takes advantage of the grading change to create topographical mounds for staged play, where children can climb, run, slide, and interact freely within the integrated playscape.

Manifestation of Theaterism

Through cultivation of the moon concept, and the theaterism place-making approach, the project hopes to re-envisage commercial public realm practices through out-of-the-box thinking. The public realm is a series of stages for the city, and the public life of the Yangcheng Lake community becomes the repertoire staged within it. The project showcases the possibility that commercial landscape can be more than just a center for gathering, but also a highly activated public realm that combines cultural relevance and civic life in the contemporary age.