Blue Corridor as Industrial Community Armature

Tianjin, as the port city with an ongoing legacy of coastal trades and industries, is now facing severe hydrological problems: the scarcity, accelerating upstream pollution, and high groundwater salinity. Situated in such context, compounded by its unique industrial heritage now threatened by the top-down land-use & relocation policy, the town of Gegu with Rockcheck Steel Plant as its biggest manufacturer urges a resilient framework to both honor its cultural identity as an industrial powerhouse and restore a healthy link between the people and water.

By transforming the invisible to visible, imperceptible to sensible within proposed blue corridor, a new cultural nexus is formed for people to innovatively participate in various treatment processes which address local and regional water crisis, while also attracting external flows of users and investments to the region. The steel-making industry acts both as a strong collaborator and a co-beneficiary during such process, performing a sustainable counter-act against its own outdating production modes. This project thus takes a stand as a prototype for industry and people co-evolving in lieu of changing environment.