Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Baietan Master Plan Awarded

The San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects has recently honored Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Baietan Master Plan with a 2011 Merit Award for Urban Design.

The Baietan Master Plan addresses a 35-square kilometer portion of the Southern Chinese Pearl River Delta that stretches between the city of Guangzhou, with its 10.3 million inhabitants, and city of Foshan, a smaller city of 5.4 million people. Growth in the Delta region has allowed the two cities to begin to merge into one mega region.

Led by SOM Planning Director Ellen Lou, the design team created a distinct, diverse, and sustainable neighborhood identity that respected its waterfront location and the intrinsic qualities of local “Lingnan” culture.

The Plan differentiated itself through its unprecedented level of detail, specifying the dimensions for attributes of individual parcels, including lighting, street furniture, taxi drop-offs, crosswalks, and pedestrian bridges. Another important differentiator of the Plan involved a strategy for maintaining the region’s “urban villages” — an important contributor to the Delta’s social fabric.

In the summer of 2010, the City Government of Guangzhou accepted the Baietan Master Plan. SOM’s Plan will guide ongoing implementation of the project over the next several years.

The design team is honored to have had the opportunity to inform this development while sensitively addressing the issues of urbanization that characterize today’s China.

The interdisciplinary SOM team included Landscape Architect Hargreaves Associates, Transportation Planner CHS Consulting, Economic Consultant CBRE, Sustainability Infrastructure Consultant Sherwood Design Engineers, Local Planning Consultant Guangzhou UPDS (Urban Planning Design Studio), and Brownfield Consultant ICF Jones & Stokes.

See more diagrams in the image gallery below. All images courtesy of SOM.