Guanshan Park brings the public life of a new urban district into a landscape of hills and water, combining urban use with ecological restoration through interconnected places. The design begins with the relationships between landform, water and urban development. Two complementary approaches organise the park: “bubble settlements” establish individual places to gather and pause, while “landscape flows” connect them with the surrounding landscape and city.

The bubble settlements draw on the way individual units aggregate into a settlement. Buildings, gardens, water features and activity platforms form groups along the waterfront. Curved boundaries meet and overlap, creating enclosed and open spaces at different scales. Planting and water extend between these units, allowing people to move between buildings, woodland and the shore, while bringing constructed spaces into close contact with their natural setting.

Landscape flows link the units into a larger whole. Pedestrian routes follow the terrain and waterfront, connecting woodland spaces, waterside places and open platforms; ecological relationships between hills and water guide the proposed restoration. The arrangement of public activities also responds to different intensities of surrounding development, giving continuity to both ecological connections and urban use. As people move, distant hills, nearby water and the structures around them come into view in turn. Walking links these landscape fragments into a changing sequence of views and places to stop.