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A city with more than a thousand ponds | Yutzu Lai

Located in Taoyuan city, Taiwan, agricultural farm-pond is a historical and humane landscape. The pond irrigation system was the ancestor’s intention to increase the effective rainfall to overcome the particular climate pattern. A hundred years back, the area of farm ponds were more than a thousand units which area was 8900ha and covered 11.8% of Taoyuan. Farm pond was not only the agricultural heritage but also played an important role in ecology and community society. As time goes by, it gradually become a unique cultural landscape for Taoyuan. However, 6000 ha of farm ponds have disappeared by the urbanization, lots of farm ponds were re-filled. Furthermore, currently a policy came with government’s determined for renewable energy development in such waste land properties, the farm ponds faces a new transition. As a landscape architect and local citizen, we would like to take an important role for seeking a win-win solution to deal with such conflict issues.
RTF Sustainability Awards 2017
First Award | Category: Landscape Design 

Architect: Yutzu Lai
Team Members: Li Wei Chou
University: Tunghai University
Country: Taiwan

What we want to do is through the preservation of its original functions and use innovative ways to protect this culture, let it connect to surroundings and become a unit of community. Turning farm pond into a space where people can get rest in city but also have the capability to absorb natural disaster.

  1. Introduce renewable energy into our site and let residents become the owner of solar panel by voluntary participation, arousing their awareness of environmental protection.
  2. Take our experimental site as center, spreading out the idea of rebuild farm pond around Taoyuan city making city become a sustainable landscape.
  3. Cooperate with the school to cultivate people’s knowledge of farm pond culture and value to environment.
  4. Import square and natural playground into the experimental site and make it become a park for urban space. In normal time, the park will be playground, however; when torrential rain come, the park will become a buffer space for city
  5. Creating a space where people can get rest and get close to nature by turn the levee into grass slope.

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