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EXISTING PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPE: aqua-culture, rice and orchards
EXISTING URBANIZATION: linear road-based development + dispersed
CAN GIUOC: New Urban and High-Tech Agriculture District (2021 - 22)
Location: Can Giuoc, Long An Province, Vietnam
Designers: RUA + Metapolis and IUPSD (Institute for Urban Planning & Sustainable Development): Bruno De Meulder, Kelly Shannon [RUA]; Mircea Munteanu, Christian Panaite, Ilie Bogdan Mircea [Metapolis Architects]; Ngô Quang Hùng, Phan Đức Duy, Châu Huy Hoàng, Hồ Thị Ngọc [IUPSD].
Commissioned by: TH Group
Period of Design: 2020 – 2021
VIETNAM
Lanscape urbanism strategy for 46,000 people
WATER + ROAD LIVING: 100 x 100 m block variation
Based on existing topography, explicit degrees of wetness were articulated to accommodate different vegetation—from mangroves to riverine forests to orchards and urban forestry. Fingers of urban development penetrate the countryside where (wet and dry) natural areas alternate with aqua- and agricultural lands. The urban fingers define the ultimate extension of the town (and the edge of the urban component of the metropolitan region). Waterways are systematically interwoven into the urban morphology and allow for systematic water transport.
The partially re-naturalized east-west Mong Ga River centers a predominantly wet natural area with lakes, marshlands and islands that can embed exclusive leisure and educational programs of international standards. The existing agricultural area south of the Mong Ga River and extending further south to the Quao River is, builds on the expertise of the TH Group, up-graded into a sustainable high-tech agri/aquacultural park that articulates another edge of the countryside. The water system unites the three areas—the urban, the predominantly wet- natural area, and the agri-/aqua-cultural zone—spatially and in mobility terms.
Urban densities related to lanscape systems
Each of the three areas accommodate patches of settlement with a variety of densities, difference in form and qualities, as well as forms of (urban) forestry.
Interweaving water, forest and settlement structures is seen as essential for the tropical city in the making (as it was historically).
Existing conditions
The conventional, nature/culture distinction was replaced by an embeddedness of culture within nature, in different variations and evolving from a more urban to natural to agricultural environment.
The proposal developed a counter model to the surrounding large developments, by Vin Group and Sun Group, in that it avoided the blanket land-leveling by filling and the crea-tion of tabula rasa. It rather exploited the ‘as found’ condition.
Context
The site was developed to accommodate a population of more than 40,000-70,000 on 910 hectares. The district, sandwiched between National Road 50 (to the west) and the Can Giuoc River (to the east), played an essential role in relation to the historic development of Cho Lon / Saigon due to its strategic position in the region’s web of waterways.
A spatial transition was therefore investigated between the city of Can Giuoc (and the HCMC metropolitan region) and the rural countryside to the south. For that purpose, the three forms of occupation of the world—forestry, agriculture, and settlement—were rearticulated from monofunctional zones (as in the current practice) into forms of co-presence.