Guangzhou Yangtian Substation 220 kv

While electric substations provide essential infrastructure to any neighborhood, they are rarely welcomed or appreciated.

Our goal was to change this relationship between the local community and their substation. To truly integrate this infrastructure into its urban and social context. On the site, we were walking around between the fishing lakes, the beehives, and the old houses of the abandoned village, our thoughts revolved around how this future neighborhood could engage with the history of the area. To somehow reflect on it. To retain some of its serene beauty. We also kept wondering about the myth of the Phoenix who came to bathe in these lakes and how it emerged from it renewed. We created a series of blades using the crushed bricks from the abandoned village as the aggregate of the concrete structure to achieve a terracotta-like surface. With formliner we create a 3dimensional surface like the feathers of the phoenix. We layered these blades with a composition technique often used in traditional landscape paintings and created an abstract landscape towards the commercial development on the south. Some of these blades form the fence of the substation. Some create a visual barrier towards the recycling centre on the North. Towards the park on the west, they open up and weave into the landscape to create pockets of spaces of different kinds of zones ; seating, fish ponds, artworks, and quiet contemplation in nature. This is our vision for reinventing the relationship between the local community and their electric substation.