A masterplan for a new educational district near Weifang, China, integrates urban density with ecological diversity. Designed in collaboration with the “Superfriends” team of WORKac, Studio Zhu-Pei, SLAB and SCAPE, the 8-million-square-meter site will ultimately house seven university campuses and a dynamic mixed-use hub, where companies will benefit from the universities’ creative resources.

Facing new urban development to the west and the Bailang River estuary to the east, the masterplan weaves together the two conditions into a complex gradient of urbanity and nature. Along the river’s edge, a series of excavated cuts generate salt marshes, restoring native habitat and wildlife and providing passive flood protection. Campus buildings are organized into a series of programmatic “bands” extending toward the river. Along the center of each, a pedestrian mall becomes a dense urban spine, concentrating student interaction in a series of quads and plazas. Gateways to either side lead to departmental courtyards and beyond, in a gradient of decreasing density, to dormitories, faculty villas and forested ravines. Defining the edges of the bands, parkways provide separated automobile access to the campus, the ecological corridors and the recreational zones that infiltrate the campus grid.