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Architects: Safdie Architects
- Area: 244000 m²
- Year: 2024
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Photographs:SFAP
Text description provided by the architects. The second phase of Habitat Qinhuangdao, a high-density residential complex located on the coast of the Bohai Sea, 200 miles east of Beijing, China. This phase more than doubled the size of the initial development, which opened in 2016, to form a vibrant community of over 1,800 households with access to over 40 acres (16 hectares) of gracious public gardens, terraces, and recreational spaces on the ground and in the sky, which is going to fully interpret the positive impact and role of architectural space on community building.
Habitat Qinhuangdao's design draws on the principles and values pioneered in Habitat '67, Moshe Safdie's groundbreaking urban housing project created for the 1967 World Exposition in Montreal. More than 50 years later, Habitat Qinhuangdao reaffirms the concept as highly scalable and widely transferable. By prioritizing daylight, natural ventilation, views, and outdoor green space, Habitat Qinhuangdao creates a vital waterfront neighborhood that nurtures community and fosters connection to nature—conditions that deliver quality of life rarely achieved in large-scale, high-density development.
"The demand for quality multi-family housing in China's growing cities has allowed us to apply the principles that informed Habitat '67 at a greater density," said Moshe Safdie, Founding Partner of Safdie Architects. "By breaking down the mega-scale, Habitat Qinhuangdao is a model for high-density housing where the amenities surpass that of the typical high-rise complex without sacrificing the structure's efficiency or humanity."
For Habitat Qinhuangdao, Safdie Architects organized the housing into a series of stacked residential blocks of 16 stories that are offset and surrounded by gardens at the base and linked via skybridges at the 17th and 32nd floors. The buildings' stepped and staggered forms create private terraces, balconies, and solariums and enclose grand "urban windows"—view corridors between the city and the sea—that humanize the scale and connect the development to its context. The buildings' long elevations face east, west, and south to take in sunshine. North-facing interiors borrow light that filters through the large urban windows. As a result, the development feels bright, airy, and open.
"In Kerry Properties we had an ambitious client who saw how our design philosophy would resonate with the local culture and context," said Sean Scensor, Senior Partner, and Partner-in-Charge of the project for Safdie Architects. "When you stagger and offset units from one another, stepping the buildings away from the sea, you create beautiful terraces that make each unit feel like a penthouse. The project is simultaneously visually intriguing and inherently rational."
Surrounding the buildings are a series of intensively planted parks that celebrate Qinhuangdao's natural landscape and support both passive and active recreation. Each park offers residents a different experience, rich and layered with varied topography, diverse flora, and engaging amenities, which include adventure playgrounds, a landscaped amphitheater, planted promenades, and water features. Additional community gardens and pool areas occupy the skybridges that link the residences and provide novel outdoor experiences amidst views of the sea, city, and the sky. The 160,000 square meter community public space and landscaped gardens not only foster intimate communication and harmonious coexistence between humans and nature but also provide multiple daily social spaces.
The approximately 5,500 square meter art center, which combines exhibition spaces, fine dining, and coffee, along with the landscape and supporting facilities on the ground and in the sky, offers residents a rich array of cultural and leisure spaces. It is not only suitable for community activities such as sports, families, art, humanities, and poetry but also supports special events like seasonal fruit and vegetable picking, sea fishing, and garden exploration, making Habitat Qinhuangdao a vibrant and three-dimensional garden community.
