Location: 875 Caoyang Road, Caoyang Xincun Sub-district, Putuo District, Shanghai

Type: Landscape Infrastructure

Site Area: 10165 sqm

Building Area: 2892 sqm

Design / Built: 2020 / 2021

Photography: Zhu Runzi, Liang Junhao

Once carrying the branch line of Zhenru freight rail and later Caoyang Farmers’ Market, the near to 1-kilometer-long and 10- to 15-meter-wide site has been re-programmed as a fresh, multilevel and mixed-use park, walkable and community-centred, shortly after the market’s closure in 2019. Conceived as ‘3K Corridors’, Caoyang Centennial Park brings art to community life, echoing the theme of 2021 Shanghai SUSAS. Site contexts were discovered and scenes reimagined, so as to design a vine-and-melon-like walking belt, from north to south, to reshape the streets’ grassland system, giving a further step of organic renewal of Caoyang Community.

The special linear site, having served as a railway-land and then a market for over 20 years, is a typical left-over space in megacities. We realize at first sight that even in a familiar city are there unexpected and surprising offcut spaces, and we must consider how to recycle them in the time of urban redevelopment.