A Highway Transformed into a Shared Surface Green Promenade: Reforming Yannan Avenue

London based design studio WallaceLiu have re-imagined a 20 m wide, 1 km long highway in the South Western Chinese city of Chongqing as a shared surface “livable street” by replacing the delineation and monolithic character of the highway with the language and scale of a public space. For the city, the client and ourselves the designers, the project provided an opportunity to explore how China’s infrastructure, built to facilitate rapid growth, can be post-rationalized to nurture an emerging urban culture.