“What’s our mission? I’ll say creating sustainable prosperity and rethinking for city.”

——Michael Patte

Michael Patte, Design Director of McGregor Coxall, Asia. Michael has more than 20 years experience in the field of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning in France and China. With the past 10 years spent in Shenzhen, Michael has worked on numerous collaborations with some of the worlds’ most recognized companies. This experience has made him a complete professional capable of dealing with all types of projects public, spaces, parks, mixed and commercial projects, waterfronts and rural areas as well as Urban Design. His passion for creating urban identity combines in-depth local knowledge,unique innovative design and communication skills to promote placemaking and activation. In March 2014, Michael was awarded by the UNESCO - Shenzhen City of Design as “Best Creative”, an award for his dedication to culture and urban development. 

The Fourteenth Five-Year Plan stressed ecological civilization construction to persist the development concept of “Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”. It’s significant for Chinese characteristic ecological civilization construction to build the modern ecological city of harmonious co-existence between human and nature, with the guidance of “green” development concept. How to build a ecological city from the viewpoint of urban design?

In Xiongan Design Forum of HIDW 2021, Michael Patte gave the speech of “Biourbanism——Design for Future City” on ecological civilization construction.

Eco-city, in the generalized sense, means the new cultural view based on a deeper understanding for the relationship between human and nature; the new social relation with coordinated development among society, economy and nature, based on ecology principles; the new production and life modes to achieve sustainable development by efficient use of environmental resources. In the narrow sense, it means to design city according to ecology principles to build the human community environment featuring efficiency, harmony, health and sustainability development.

Michael Patte said city had two systems: bio-system and city system, which should be complementary rather than contradictory. City was opposite to nature tn the past, however, there was a trend to involve city into nature at present. 

Michael presented a method to help eco-city design and related design evaluation, an innovative combination of elements from both bio-system and city system. The elements of bio-system included citizens, food, landscapes, waste and water and the elements of city system include economy, energy, travel modes, technologies and infrastructures. The combination of all elements can help people know our cities in an all-round way.

There are different life styles in different cities as the weight of population density and green space are in different levels, as well as the percentage of green space influence residents’ life quality and experience. “Blue and green network” integrates water element (“blue”) and plant element (“green”) into design to build a city with slow pace and preserve urban texture.

Michael said, we should consider that different elements had the same quality, resource and depth when we integrated different elements into cities through the concept of “blue and green network”.

We can apply different functions of “blue and green network” in many fields of a city, but we should solve how to apply “blue and green network” in the compact urban form. Michael thought China should support the related development and proposed four main aspects of design presentation evaluation, including sustainability, green economy, intelligent government and delivery.

How to create a better environment in a city?

Michael thought we should take rooftop utilization into consideration as rooftop had an important space percentage. Design for rooftop can bring new city experience, such as changing perception of city, creating multi-dimensional city, help city transformation. He said, we can design rooftop into a leisure area and entertainment area as a place for social activities or into artistic creation area to make lively community atmosphere. In addition, rooftop can help for heat reduction, water treatment, carbon dioxide absorption and other problems.

About the street utilization, Michael said, although street was mainly used for transportation previously, street can be a independent space, more than the simple connection between two spaces. By reconsidering street, we should design it for human not just traffic and for creating space to improve life experience.