Sangha: Master Plan
SANGHA: Master Plan
Suzhou, China
Conceived and realized by the Shanghai-based developer Octave in collaboration with the Brooklyn-based architects Tsao & McKown, Sangha is a 46-acre development that offers a new model for creating holistic communities.
Sangha’s mission is to help people and communities learn about how to live well (physically, emotionally, and socially) in a rapidly changing country. Octave and Tsao & McKown dedicated years of interdisciplinary research and significant investment to create this viable model, which the team hopes will be adopted by other developers who seek to foster better living in the 21st century.
The creation of Sangha has involved the collaboration of the Chinese government as well as non-profit and for-profit entities in China, the United States and Singapore.
Sangha is located on Yangcheng Lake on the periphery of Suzhou, China, a UNESCO world heritage site about an hour’s drive west of Shanghai. Single-family residences, apartments, hotels, a medical clinic, an East/West wellness center, food markets and food hall, a conference/learning center, a childhood learning center, and an innovation gallery are among the components that comprise the pedestrian oriented live-work-learn community.
Sangha is master planned to accommodate the needs of permanent residents, guests, and visitors from surrounding communities of differing ages and socio-economic backgrounds. All the public areas and most of the homes are accessible to the physically disabled.
Sangha is unique as a mission-driven commercial development offering learning programs for all ages as well as a holistic range of Eastern and Western medical services and wellness treatments.
Sangha is evidence of what can be accomplished when an architect is given a significant role from the outset of a project’s inception in determining the services and programs (“software”) to be accommodated, as well as leading the design of the environments: architecture, interiors, and landscape (“hardware”).
Sangha’s design mantra was “design to deflect attention away from design-and back to nature.” Human-scaled buildings reduce the boundaries between inside and outside. Streets and pathways are scaled to a pedestrian’s stride, accentuated with benches and niches where people can pause and take in a view. The buildings are designed to support the many programs that occur within this mixed-use site.
Repetition of materials and color is leavened by ingenious variation. Buildings are sited to optimize the harvesting of natural light, vistas and cool breezes. Open airy rooms are articulated by color and honestly-expressed, richly-textured materials.
Tsao & McKown specified local natural materials as much as possible and creatively repurposed reclaimed building elements. They commissioned local artisans and laborers, valuing the presence of the human touch in making and benefiting from passed-down skills and craft traditions.
