In the future, the competition between cities will go beyond the traditional pattern and direction. This competition which advocates “Quality City”, is an exploration and attempt of transforming methods for urban public spaces. “Quality City” is intended to further enhance grade and characteristics of a city, show deeper potential inside the city, integrate spirit and culture of the city into the physical construction and development, and form the spiritual essence reflecting the identity of city, making more beautiful the buildings, more convenient the public services, and more delightful the living environment.
This international competition is based on Xingtai City’s actual context, which is full of historical heritage and development potential. Taking public spaces as the fulcrum, it is open to all college students, from home and abroad, in urban planning, architectural design, landscape design, art design and so on, and is aimed to solicit creative renewal proposals for urban microscopic spaces. The design content include 1) Urban Renovation, 2) Smart City Furniture, 3) Health & Sports Facilities, 4) Public Art Installations and other buildings or installations that can stimulate the vitality of city, offering new perspective, new stage and new focus for the richness and vividness of daily life. The prize-winning works will have the opportunity to be implemented in Xingtai City, and the final decision will be made by local government.
1. Design Principles
1) Creativity: Create diverse and interesting places for Xingtai citizens and tourists. Design must be original;
2) Locality: Project should be designed with a comprehensive consideration of local history, culture, and natural environment of Xingtai with its regional features highlighted;
3) Sustainability: The sustainability of materials and operation should be considered;
4) Feasibility: The selection of material, and the form of construction should all be feasible;
5) People-orientation: Designs should fully consider diverse needs of different groups of people and provide citizens and tourists urban spaces for activities.
2. Design Category
The design category should be of great variety. Focusing on public spaces where people’s daily life occur, 15 nodes or plots such as squares, blocks, open spaces and public green spaces in Xingtai City and Expo Park are selected for design. They are:
(1) Urban Renovation
Eg. Food market, Public toilet, Parking lot, Snack bar, Electromobile stop
(2) Smart City Furniture
Eg. Digital information kiosks, Newsstand, Express cabinet, Smart bus stop, Intelligent charging station, Intelligent dustbin.
(3) Health & Sports Facilities
Eg. Fitness facilities, Children recreational facilities
(4) Public Art Installations
Eg. Landscape sculpture, Cultural installation, Pavilion & Corridor, Flower stand & rockery, Light post, Seats, Dustbin
Participants can submit an independent work or a series of entries. Multiple entries are not accepted. The series works refer to the series of creations under the same theme, while production-oriented repetitive patchwork is discouraged.
(Please see the attachment of the micro-spatial site and preferable themes)
1. Registration
(1) This competition is open to university and college students from the fields of urban planning, architecture, landscape design, art design and relevant disciplines in form of individual or group participation. Each group should have no more than 5 members including 1 group leader, and the number of supervisors is limited to 2.
(2) For registration, please log in the competition website: http://qcityxingtai.uedmagazine.net, click “Registration” and fill in the information;
(3) Please keep the sole registration number properly after submitting the registration information online (the registration number is the telephone number which is submitted).
2. Site
(1) The organizing committee shall provide basic information on the recommended sites; participants can select one from these sites.
(2) Participants are also encouraged to select sites and design theme by themselves, discovering and finding solutions for urban issues in a bottom-up approach under the theme of “Planning and Design for Beautiful Hebei”. Self-selected site should be real site in the city of Xingtai. Photos, satellite images and videos of the site are required in submission materials. Participants are required to consult the organizing committee on the specific condition of self-selected sites before design.
(3) Whether the participants choose the provided site or self-selected site has no influence on the jury review. (The information of the provided site can be downloaded from the official website)
3. Submission
All participants are required to submit digital files, including drawings and other information to qcityxingtai@163.com named as "Submission + Title of Work”. The organizing committee does not accept any hard copy. All design panels of participants will be printed in a unified format for jury review.
4. Jury Review
The final winning projects will be determined during the jury review.
5. Q&A
(1) Please email your questions about the competition to: qcityxingtai@163.com
(2) The leader of a group should be the sole responsible contact person to the organization committee
Xingtai is located in the southern part of Hebei province, adjacent to Shandong province in the east with Wei Canal as the boundary, west to Shanxi province, north and northeast to Shijiazhuang and Hengshui, south to Handan. This Land has bred a large number of great figures and events that have a great impact on China and the world, leaving behind a rich historical and cultural relic during the 3500-year-old civilization.
Sponsor: Hebei Provincial People’s Government
Organizer: Hebei Provincial Department of Housing & Urban-Rural Development, Xingtai Municipal People’s Government
Organizational Unit：Xingtai Natural Resources and Planning Bureau
Planning and Execution Unit: Urban Environment Design (UED) Magazine
Mainland China: 010-56077246;
LIU Jing +86 18600687662；liujing@uedmagazine.net
LIU Meijing: +86 18600687330；liumeijing@uedmagazine.net
China Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and abroad:
Phoebe +86 18511537506；maomingzi@uedmagazine.net
Wang Jiayue +86 13189714339；wangjiayue@uedmagazine.net
Competition Email: qcityxingtai@163.com
Competition Website: http://qcityxingtai.uedmagazine.net
Contact information of Urban Environment Design (UED) Magazine:
Company Address: Third floor, Inside-out Architecture Artist Colony, NO.50, Xingshikou Road, Haidian District, Beijing, P.R.C.
Official Website: www.uedmagazine.net
