Over the past decade, China’s health and wellness communities have experienced rapid growth. However, this trend raises an important question: as numerous suburban health and wellness centers emerge, are elderly individuals left with no choice but to live away from the familiar urban environment? Urban elderly care institutions have often been negatively perceived by the public. In a way, are we isolating our seniors from the city?
This prompts us to consider: can we design retirement communities that coexist seamlessly with urban life, allowing the elderly to remain integrated within the city?
At the end of last year, we began designing the Yuanlong Beautiful City project in Shaoxing Jinghu New Area, aiming to address this question through thoughtful urban design.
△ Rendering of Yuanlong Shaoxing Beautiful City © Qicheng Design
01 Finding Answers Through the City
The planning approach deeply responds to the unique characteristics of the region.
△ Project Location Analysis Map © Qicheng Design
The project site offers three key advantages:
- The Jinghu New Hospital of Shaoxing People’s Hospital is currently under construction on the east side of the site, providing abundant medical resources;
- Metro Line 2 is being built to the north, featuring a pedestrian entrance directly connected to the site. Additionally, Metro Line 3 is planned to pass north-south on the east side, ensuring excellent transportation access;
- The client envisions a diverse mix of residential areas, senior apartments, commercial zones, postpartum centers, medical beauty facilities, sports rehabilitation, and other business formats integrated into the project.
△ Site Analysis © Qicheng Design
Locals in Shaoxing enjoy a lifestyle centered around nearby shopping, leisurely walks, and visiting friends. They tend to avoid large enclosed shopping malls, preferring open, welcoming public community spaces that easily connect them to everyday life.
While the hospital under construction offers medical convenience, it also presents a challenge: balancing accessibility with minimizing disruption to daily life. The design therefore carefully arranges architectural forms to establish a comfortable psychological buffer zone.
△ Design Formation Analysis © Qicheng Design
△ Commercial Street Scale Analysis © Qicheng Design
△ Aerial Night View Rendering © Qicheng Design
Providing convenient living conditions and familiar community scales is essential to helping elderly residents reconnect with urban life.
02 Creating Lively Lifestyle Scenarios
Authentic life scenes must be open and inviting.
To truly integrate into the city, the elderly must first integrate into daily life. Real-life settings are open, diverse, and free. We have observed that some health and wellness communities appear merely as staged environments, where seniors act as passive participants, their lives closed off and disconnected from the city.
We believe that genuine, non-staged living environments can take root in the urban fabric, nourished by the city’s vitality. Community spaces should be actively used daily by both residents and other city dwellers.
We plan to use a 3,000 square meter core facility as a “public reception room,” integrating independent amenities into urban commercial spaces. These will be connected through multi-level transportation routes, enabling elderly residents to stroll throughout and foster wider neighborhood relationships.
△ Functional Linkage Analysis © Qicheng Design
△ Functional Flow Analysis © Qicheng Design
△ Project Format Distribution and Transport Connectivity Analysis © Qicheng Design
△ Yuanlong Shaoxing Beautiful City Rendering © Qicheng Design
03 Transforming Communities
△ Growing Community Rendering © Qicheng Design
Our goal is for seniors’ lives to sync with the rhythm of the world around them — to witness their community evolve and embrace new experiences. The design reserves flexibility for functional transformations, with a streamlined layout that can adapt to various business changes and combinations.
△ Clubhouse Building Axis Analysis © Qicheng Design
△ Commercial Axis Analysis © Qicheng Design
Leveraging the potential of open communities, we encourage elderly residents to engage with the city through “re-employment” opportunities, even maintaining a presence within commercial spaces to pursue their interests and expertise.
△ Comprehensive Entrance Rendering © Qicheng Design
△ Core Facilities Rendering © Qicheng Design
If the community’s smooth internal operation forms a self-sustaining cycle, then its positive interactions with the city create an external cycle. We aim for seniors to feel the vibrant pulse of their community within this dual dynamic.
Project Information
Project Name: Yuanlong Shaoxing Beautiful City
Location: Jinghu New District, Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province
Area: 140,588 square meters
Functional Uses: Healthcare, medical, hotel, commercial, and more
Developer: Yuanlong Real Estate
Architectural Design: Qicheng Design
Design Period: January 2021 to August 2021
Lead Designers: Guan Yiqun, Wu Qingzhe
Design Team: Dai Aidi, Jin Xiaoyan, Guo Lijiang, Sun Yue, Guan Qingyu
Construction Drawing Design: Tongchuang Engineering Design Co., Ltd
Curtain Wall Design: Zhongnan Curtain Wall
Awards: 6th REARD Global Real Estate Design Award – Gold Award
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