BEIJING OLYMPIC FOREST PARK

Beijing Olympic Forest Park is a 680-hectare park built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The project is an addition to the Beijing Olympic Green, a conceptual planning competition organized in 2000. The park is the largest green space ever built in Beijing, on the city's historical north-south axis. The project was built in consideration of Beijing's rapid urbanization and aging infrastructure, as well as water shortages and its diminishing open spaces compared to increasing population density. While the park was built for the Olympics, it was conceived as a green lung and ecological buffer for the city that would function beyond the conclusion of the Olympic games. Today, the park is an urban gathering place that provides ecosystem functions for the city, as well as metrics for landscape performance, including the number of jobs created by the project for long-term maintenance. The planting scheme of the park creates native plant communities to increase biodiversity with over 2 million plants, 100 species of trees, and a series of various ecosystems that visitors can access that have deep cultural significance, as well as materials from across China. The park also has a model water reclamation system based on existing water bodies that captures surface runoff and gray water from the city to irrigate the plantings that sequester over 8 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually while reducing the urban heat island effect in the city. The park also includes elements of clean energy generation, with solar panels installed on the gates leading to the south entrance of the park.
2008
1680 acres
144 feet above sea level