The site is a modern city built over the remains of historical Yixing, a town with remarkable connection to another Yixing town in Jiangsu province. With the construction of the Grand Canal, the residents of Yixing moved their entire village, and reconstructed a facsimile to north of Tianjin city. While this historical town was destroyed, BAM utilizes the urban plan of the original Yixing as a palimpsest. The Sports Park plot is overlayed with the urban plan of the original Yixing town. Circulation spaces are preserved, and the architecture is occupied by mazes, playgrounds, fountains, tetherball, tennis, basketball, and beer gardens.
The central public space forms a long plaza space and features a tall chimney, which is the site of a geothermal well. The maze has been an integral idea to the design of the park connecting spatial and thematic aspects of the design together. Spatially, the maze echoes the feel of the ancient town with its meandering streets. The maze also works as an analogy for the learning process in which one always works to find their own path. The ecological impact of the site is very much determined by its size.
This is ‘high-density’ park on a relatively small site. As such the park fulfills its main ecological function by generating greater awareness to the issues of the environment through two key features - the geothermal chimney and the interactive hydrological model water feature. Besides key ecological benefits, one of the fundamental purposes of a park is to connect to our ideas of Nature. Creating the feeling of a ‘natural’ environment goes beyond simply adding greenery. The key is making spaces of the city which focus on people and their experiences in the urban condition, places where people can feel at scale with the surrounding environment.