The quarry that built modern Beijing gets a surprising second life

"We needed to create an ecological base. But on top of that, we also wanted to bring people back into this park. Although it was originally a mining place, we feel like these two things can kind of coexist. The park that's resulted from nearly a decade of planning is part landscape repair, part land art."

"The site was a quarry that from 1990 to 2015 provided the raw material to help Beijing grow at hyperspeed, supplying everything from skyscrapers to roads to the main stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Last operated by Beijing Xingfa Cement Co., its closure left behind a negative space that is the inverse of the vertical urbanity of Beijing."

"The unavoidable scars of the quarry's two crater-like pits have been reframed as performative elements. One pit serves as a seasonal lake that captures water from across the site in a carefully coordinated drainage system engineered to handle the summer deluges that can cause flooding in the region."

Beijing's northern outskirts contain a massive quarry that operated from 1990 to 2015, extracting raw materials for the city's explosive urban development, including skyscrapers, roads, and Olympic facilities. After nearly a decade of planning, the site has been rehabilitated into a striking 265-acre park designed by global landscape architecture firm SWA. The remediation project transforms the quarry's dramatic crater-like pits into functional ecological features: one serves as a seasonal lake managing regional flooding through engineered drainage systems, while the other provides scenic value. The design integrates ecological restoration with public access, converting former factory and administrative buildings into a national science research campus. This comprehensive transformation demonstrates how severely depleted industrial landscapes can be repurposed as vibrant destinations that balance environmental recovery with human engagement.

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