The lawn’s central location and gentle slope—almost like a lounge chair— makes it a popular lunchtime getaway for office workers to nap or people-watch. Dubbed the “Workers’ Sanctuary,” the spot has drawn hundreds of daily visitors from the nearby towers to unwind together outside in the grass—such opportunities are rare in the dense city. The phenomenon has sparked a hashtag “20-Minute Park Effect” on Chinese social media to describe the recharging effect of lounging outside, even for a short interval.
Sparking extensive discussion on social media, more and more people noticed this hidden gem and wondered, who proposed this genius idea?
Xuhui Runway Park, of which the Workers’ Sanctuary is a small section, is a 36-acre (14-hectare) linear park which Sasaki designed on the site of the former Longhua airport. The lawn not only offers the citizens an accessible and peaceful place to take a step back from work, but also helps collect and manage the stormwater with an underground cistern to maintain the soil and conserve water in the park.
“We tried to build a focus area down below so people around that can kind of look over to the activities in the sunken plaza, ” said Dou Zhang, landscape architect and director of Sasaki’s Shanghai office. “On the north and south side, we had benches. For this side, we decided to make it a little different, make it softer and greener. The angle is about 135 degrees. That’s something we had tested many times in our office, trying to find a comfortable slope for people to lie down.”
In addition to the human-scaled lawn, Xuhui Runway Park provides many kinds of programmed and unprogrammed space to make the park inclusive to all types of users. The team also put effort into enhancing environmental resilience by providing abundant habitats to wildlife, which simultaneously reduced the heat island effect on site.
The lawn at Xuhui Runway Park exemplifies Sasaki’s commitment to human-focused, resilient, and sustainable design.