At MixC Shenzhen Bay Phase II, Grant Associates has created a 1-kilometre elevated public realm that weaves ecology, infrastructure and everyday life into a multi-level urban landscape.
MixC Shenzhen Bay Phase II is a 9‑hectare mixed‑use district that brings together a linear park, infrastructure, retail, entertainment, cultural institutions, and luxury residences. Blurring boundaries between urban functions and layers, the development connects the new downtown to Shenzhen Bay waterfront via a multi‑level public realm and continuous pedestrian network.
At its heart is a 1‑kilometre elevated walkway, which serves both as linear park and mobility spine, designed to manage challenging street‑level conditions and offer uninterrupted pedestrian access from Houhai to Shenzhen Bay. More than infrastructure, it operates as a civic destination, movement corridor, and landscape in the sky.
Lichens - hybrid organisms found in healthy ecosystems - formed the conceptual foundation of the design. Their hyper‑natural geometries established a distinctive district identity and a sculptural language for ecological and social experiences. Parametric modelling allowed us to test options, optimise layouts, and modularise elements, turning the formal logic of hyper‑nature into constructed reality and, like lichens themselves, an indicator of urban health.
Hyper‑Nature in a Hyper‑City
Shenzhen is a city of paradoxes. One of China’s most technologically advanced centres, it is defined by tech giants, a young population, and rapid urban transformation. Drones buzz overhead and LED façades glow across the city, while surrounded by blue skies, forested hills, and significant biodiversity.
As designers, we asked: how can the public realm reconnect people with Shenzhen’s ecological richness while embracing its contemporary identity?
The project sits on reclaimed land, sandwiched between transport hubs and infrastructure corridors. The master plan required underground pedestrian routes and open space at street level. A dense basement limited tree planting and column locations, while municipal services within the park impacted access and connectivity. These constraints shaped the opportunity for a multi‑layered landscape capable of extending planting across different levels.
A Concept Rooted in Hyper‑Nature
The design began not with a form, but with a vision - “Hyper Nature”, a fusion of Shenzhen’s biodiversity and technological image.
The city’s orchids, ferns, and micro‑habitats influenced the ecological palette, but lichens captivated us. Lichens are everywhere yet easily overlooked. Both fungus and algae, lichens are environmental indicators whose crustose, foliose, and fruticose forms respond to their surroundings. Lichens and their complex, layered morphologies became the origin of the design language, and of the project’s identity.
Research as Design Foundation
Due to the site's complexity, our process began with rigorous three‑dimensional analysis and early collaboration with a structural engineer to identify constraints and opportunities. For nearly two years, we immersed ourselves in lichen morphology — sketching, studying and testing forms – to develop a conceptual framework and shape a design vocabulary that included:
- Paving inspired by lichen crustose and density gradients
- Seating and furniture abstracted from branching and clustering logics
- Columns and structural supports influenced by fruticose geometries
- Planters and edges echoing attachment and expansion behaviours
It was a story-led process, but also an analytical one. Every expressive form was grounded in logic. This early research phase established the project’s design DNA.
An Integrated Public Realm Across Multiple Levels
While elevated walkways are not new to Shenzhen, we envisioned something different: an elevated green corridor that connects adjacent biodiversity into the urban landscape and extends ground‑level planting vertically.
Given basement constraints, substantial planting at elevation became essential for shade and comfort. Early coordination with architects and engineers determined feasible planting zones, structural spans, and opportunities for vertical ecology. We intended the elevated walkway to:
- create continuity between the linear park and retail district
- serve as the primary mobility spine
- provide shade, greenery, and pedestrian comfort
- offer views and community spaces
- integrate seamlessly with surrounding architecture and civic infrastructure
The 1‑kilometre walkway is thus a public landscape, architectural feature, and ecological corridor. To unify the district’s identity, we developed three lichen‑inspired typologies to create a cohesive design language:
- Wandering lichens — groves and clusters in open spaces
- Floating lichens — elevated decks and resting platforms
- Hanging lichens — planters integrated with architecture
By night, lighting and digital displays animate these forms. Planter‑topped columns bring trees and biodiversity to elevated heights, creating ecological stepping stones and intimate gathering spaces.
The proposed planting palette draws from Shenzhen’s own landscapes — hilltop shrublands, fern‑rich gullies, and vibrant seasonal displays — offering both ecological connectivity and cultural resonance.
Engineering as Form, Form as Engineering
Realising the walkway’s geometry required engineering and design to evolve together. This was not a linear process of “design first, engineer later”, it was reciprocal:
- Form became structural logic
- Structure informed the form
- Constraints became opportunities
- Parametric tools bridged imagination and buildability.
Parametric modelling allowed rapid iteration across a multitude of options to reconcile basement grid, column placement, planting soil depths, lighting and services integration, pedestrian clearances and expressive geometries. This computational approach transformed “Hyper Nature” from vision into an engineered ecosystem suspended above the city.
Ecology in the Vertical Realm
With limited planting opportunities at ground level, vertical greening became essential. The elevated plane allows users to experience landscape across multiple levels. Columns were designed with integrated planters, and together with continuous planters and green roofs, these support trees at height along with birds, insects, and other fauna. The regional plant palette not only provides shade and micro-habitats, but enriches these elevated landscapes with familiar seasonal colour.
Delight in the Everyday
Although the district features iconic architecture, our priority has always been the everyday journey. The walk to dinner, the shortcut across the park, the shaded moment under the walkway, the approach to transit hubs.
On revisiting the built project, it was these small moments that defined the project’s success. Families strolling along the elevated path, workers seeking shelter beneath, retail celebrating southern Chinese culture, shifting tree shadows across benches, and the in‑between spaces where people slowed, paused, and wandered.
A public realm succeeds not through its grand gestures, but through the quality of its ordinary moments.
A Hyper‑Natural Future for Shenzhen
Shenzhen Bay MixC Phase II is a fusion of research, design, engineering, and narrative. A landscape where nature inspires form, and ecology is woven into daily life. As Shenzhen continues to evolve, this project suggests a future where the city can be both hyper‑modern and hyper‑natural. Where public realm can be adaptive, vibrant, lush, and human scale.
Project Credits
Landscape Architect: Grant Associates Singapore Pte Ltd
Design Architect: Oval Partnership
Design Structural Engineer: Passage Projects
Local Design Institute: Capol International & Associates Group
Civil & Infrastructure: WISDRI Engineering & Research Incorporation Limited
Structural Engineer: Arup Shenzhen
Mechanical & Electrical Engineer: Meinhardt Hong Kong
Transport Consultants: MVA Asia
