Many of the world’s cities developed around industrial waterfronts which serviced the city’s transportation and manufacturing processes. Waterfronts today have become much sought-after real estate due to lack of available land and the appeal of waterfront living. At London’s Canary Wharf, an industrial docklands was transformed into a global financial center. Similarly, the massive development at New York’s Hudson Yards is being built over a rail yard.

Such efforts come at significant expense to raze or deck over existing infrastructure. The Guangzhou Shipyard Redevelopment challenges these assumptions by re-purposing industrial relics into smart-city infrastructure to enhance the quality of the shipyard’s public spaces. These ‘living machines’ harness sun and water to provide shade and cooling in Guangzhou’s hot, subtropical climate.

The sheer scale of the shipyard’s industrial artifacts makes such a premise possible. Four massive dry docks, each over 200 meters long, are able to contain and process the equivalent of 29 Olympic-size swimming pools. High-water from the Pearl River is drawn through the dock gates and passed through a sequence of natural filtration layers.

At the center of the shipyard redevelopment is an ‘urban cloud’—a canopy-like structure functioning as both a physical device to provide shade and cooling, and as a digital sensory device which gathers urban data. The urban cloud deploys proximity sensors which trigger beneficial cooling mist where people gather, using water drawn from the shipyard’s dry docks. Photo-voltaic panels on the cloud’s surface power and complete the self-sustaining system. Through its synthesis of physical, digital, and biological processes, the project presents a future-forward vision of how ship-building machines can be re-purposed as living machines which empower people.