Ring of Life for New City in China
It towers 515 feet, spans a 1,617-foot circumference, weighs about 3,000 tons, contains 16,000 LED lights, and is attracting worldwide attention as the spectacular beacon of a new master-planned city in northeast China.
Recently completed and set for an official dedication this spring, The Ring of Life at Shenfu New Town, in northeast China’s Liaoning Province, is said to be the latest master showpiece of designer Gary Goddard, who has been designing top theme parks, entertainment complexes, mega-resorts and casinos.
Goddard, president of Hollywood-based Goddard Group, also was given the task of master-planning the two-square-kilometer urban core of Shenfu, a city named for its location between Shenyang and Fushun, about 450 miles northeast of China’s capital city, Beijing.
[ Also Read: IBM Advised to Treat its People with Humanism in China ]The Ring of Life commands two man-made lakes around which Shenfu’s central district is designed.
“The Ring of Life rises as a unique emblem of the goals and aspirations of this new city’s founders,” Goddard says. “The Ring is a metaphor for the balance in all things, and despite the classic simplicity of a perfect circle, none of the world’s iconic structures and monuments had embodied it until now. I felt this classic symbol, set at the edge of the lake and the urban street, best represented the spirit of Shenfu New City.”
[ Also Read: SAP to Invest US$2 Billion in China by 2015 ]Goddard Group was retained by the Fushun Economic Development Area Administration Committee in 2009 to master plan many of the commercial, entertainment and recreational features of the new city.
Erecting a structure intended to be iconic was Goddard’s idea, serving as a means of helping Shenfu attain distinction from other new urban complexes under development in China.
During the final engineering stage, Goddard Group worked closely with ECADI Architects and Engineers, known for the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai.
