Brave New World — An American design firm helps create a new concept in planned communities
Palisadian Kris Haberman lived and worked in Shanghai for four months this past spring, embedded in the Chinese client team, which was comprised of developers, architects, restaurateurs and financial analysts. The project was for a Chinese real estate developer who wanted to create a new style of community within China.
Kris works for ESI Design (www.esidesign.com) headed by President and Principal Designer Edwin Schlossberg. An experience design firm that specializes in retail, museum and on-line environments, the company recently designed exhibits for the “Dream Cube” at the Shanghai World Expo, which used multimedia and immersive sensory environments to lead visitors through a story of Shanghai’s past, present and future. The experience is based on visitor participation (for example, as visitors wave their hands in the air together, the outside animation of the building changes, illustrating a theme of people coming together to affect change). “That project was our first in China and received great accolades,” Kris relates.
“Because of the social upheaval of the Cultural Revolution,” Kris says, “the massive migration from rural farms to urban cities, and the rampant consumerism brought on by the precipitous rise in personal wealth, many Chinese traditions and communities have been disrupted or destroyed. The Chinese real estate developer wants to create a new kind of community - one that emphasizes learning and the creative arts. It is planned to be environmentally sustainable, integrate new social media tools (such as on-line chat rooms, games, resources and social connection sites) and foster discussion between residents of different social and economic backgrounds.”
Kris continues, “It is designed to blend the traditional with the modern (such as traditional Chinese medicine therapies integrated into modern clinics), and encourage a holistic view of the environment and health through the integration of organic farms and restaurants with teaching capabilities like Stone Barns (a nonprofit farm, education center and restaurant 25 miles north of Manhattan designed to promote sustainable, community-based food production). It will nurture creativity and entrepreneurship with multimedia studios, creative galleries and resource environments designed to encourage collaboration and develop a sense of connectedness among residents.”
“A big challenge, right? We’ve created the concept documents for this project and now the client is acquiring the large land grants (approximately 1,000 to 3,000 acres in size) from the government to build these communities. They want to roll them out across all of China (scalability is how you make your money in China!) and hopefully we will see some of the first communities built within the next three to five years.”
Kris says living and working in China was an amazing experience. “I ate things I never dreamed I would eat - like the Chinese say, they will eat anything with four legs except for the table! - and toured around China quite a bit. I was glad to return home though. It was a lovely experience but I realized that my life is solidly centered here in the U.S. and I really wouldn’t want to live anywhere else!”