A city being built in Chengdu, China has been designed as a no-car, green urban development where residents will have to take other transport or walk.
Chengdu Future Science and Technology City will be 4.6 square kilometers (1.8 square miles) in the hills outside Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.
The release of images by the two architecture companies designing and building the city have gone viral. The architects are Office for Metropolitan Architecture from the Netherlands and Germany's Gerkan, Marg & Partners.
They were appointed by the city government following an international design competition. OMA is responsible for 460,000 square meters of the new city. GMP will lead the design of public spaces and transport.
The new city will include universities, dormitories, national laboratories and offices. It will mimic the surrounding hilly landscape to form a valley with an 80,000 square foot building at its center. Buildings will feature landscaped terraces and become an extension of the natural landforms.
The campus will be based on the natural surroundings rather than the needs of car traffic, said OMA partner-in-charge Chris van Duijn.
"With this project, we hope to provide an alternative to the typical masterplan, which is based on the traditional car-oriented road network," van Duijn said.
"We intend to create a design rooted in the geography of the site. We hope that connection between architecture and landscape will result in a dynamic environment for education that will inspire innovative ideas."
He said OMA anticipated the first phases of the project will be completed by the end of this year. Other sites will be completed within two more years.
"Despite decades of urbanization in China the repertoire of urban planning is still very limited," van Duijn said.
"It seems we have only two conditions: it is either a city or it is a rural area. But as cities have expanded...people are also becoming interested in alternatives,"
He said the Chengdu future city wasn't a typical urban project and neither was it a landscape preservation project. OMA hopes to provide many ways in which cities and the countryside can coexist.
