The“EU- China Sustainable Urbanisation Park”(SUP) project in Shenyang (China), designed by Progetto CMR, got the Golden Award for Planning in “The 12th Chinese Classic Habitat Architectural Planning and Design Program Award”. The Award, known also as the Oscar Award in Chinese real estate industry, is an authoritative and nationwide real estate contest, selecting the best projects in the fields of Architecture, Technology, Planning and Environment.
The Competition has been successfully held for eleven years, and it is organized by the most authoritative academic organization in China, The Architecture Society of China. The Association gathers professionals of architectural science and technology in China, acting as the official “think tank” of the Government and cooperating with the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development to promote sustainable development.
The jury featured famous experts in this field, including Li Binren, the general economist of Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Mr Song Chunhua, Director of Architecture Society of China as well as former Vice Minister of the MoHURD, and senior professionals from some of the most famous Chinese universities, as Tsinghua, Tongji University and South China University.
Nearly 300 people from over 100 companies around China joined the award ceremony held on October 28th in Beijing. The Managing Director of Progetto CMR, Massimo Bagnasco joined the award ceremony and delivered a speech as the representative of all awarded companies, sharing with all delegates the background, main ideas, purposes and peculiarities of the SUP project. Furthermore Laurent Javaudin, EU Delegation Trade Section Officer Energy & Sustainable Urbanisation and the most important supporter of the SUP project as well as Florian Schmied, CEO of Euro Sino Invest which is in charge for the whole development from the investment process through construction and sales of the SUP, attended the award ceremony.
Sustainability is the real red thread of the whole project. As Mr Bagnasco said, “[…] The key point of this plan is sustainability. Sustainability has now become a fuzzy, fashion word, often used without understanding its real meaning and scope. On the contrary, we do believe in the added value brought by sustainability for the positive outcome of the project: this masterplan is sustainable not only by an environmental point of view, but also and foremost by an economical point of view.”
The SUP project, aiming at setting an example for Chinese urban reality, has been succeeding in showing how the couple urbanization and sustainability is not an oxymoron, not anymore.