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THE RING CHONGQING, CHINA Selling biophilic benefits
Shopping malls are a key social destination in China, and with this in mind Lead8 sought to provide a landscape-rich interior to enhance the experience of a new mixed- use scheme in Chongqing, in the form of a huge botanical garden. James Parker reports
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he Ring, opened in spring 2021 in the fast-growing metropolis of Chongqing in south west China, is a new mixed use project whose interior, by retail and leisure specialists Lead8, contains one big difference. In the first scheme of its kind for the municipality’s 32 million inhabitants, the building contains a 42-metre high ‘botanical garden,’ linked to a range of retail, sports, and cultural/entertainment spaces. In so doing, the project team says, it creates a ‘living mall,’ with its design driven by sustainability principles of maximising wellness for all users.
According to the similarly exponentially- growing Hong Kong-based firm of architects, the city’s new mixed-use development “entwines retail, nature, culture and experience.” As the interior designers, the Lead8 team also intended for it to be “truly innovative, delivering a new-generation social destination, and an urban natural community.” The scale of the internal gardens incorporated demonstrates the emphasis now being placed on biophilia-based design ambitions by commercial clients and by association, their designers. It has moved way beyond token gestures at the fringes, to a serious allocation of what is non income-generating space to greenery. Lead8’s portfolio showcases large-scale mixed-use projects, often including retail, such as high-profile schemes in major Asian cities like MixC Shenzhen Bay, One Bangkok, and 11 SKIES in Hong Kong. According to the practice’s co-founder and executive director, Simon Chua, its “significant track record in conceiving and delivering retail-led destinations across Asia” has garnered the firm a strong
ADF APRIL 2022
reputation in the sector, cemented by various awards. On The Ring however, the team took a different approach when it came to the landscaping-focused interior design of this distinctive project – for developer client Hongkong Land. This essentially meant allowing the very ‘green’ design concept for the interiors to guide the wider design, “with a vision to be unique to the market,” as Chua tells ADF. However, he explains that when the architects initially received the brief from the client, the substantial botanic garden element finally achieved “was not a major component of the scheme,” although the client had four key values for the project which helped drive Lead8 towards its concept, namely: “Organic, Respectful, Inspiring and Magnetic.” Lead8’s design team worked to expand the idea of interior retail landscape into a “major design intervention that integrated a multi-level living garden into the retail mall,” says Chua. Throughout this process, Lead8 worked to “refine the connective layers of the design,” which meant collaborating with structural engineers, landscape consultant and client to develop what would be called the ‘Oasis Walk’; a series of ramps allowing visitors to directly interact with the gardens at all levels.
Scope, location & context Lead8’s Chua says that The Ring will “reshape the city’s (and region’s) expectations for what experiential retail destinations can deliver.” The development is the first to be completed within a planned series of retail developments by Hongkong Land which come under the branding of ‘The Ring.’
Photography © Lead8
“The pandemic has illuminated the importance of healthy lifestyles and our desire to maintain a connection with nature” Simon Chua, Lead8
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