Hunnu City, Mongolia

A living organism, a new constellation of life

Typology

Masterplan

Program

Public place

Perspective

Climate Change Nature-Based Solutions

Location

47.659 262, 106.836 980

Hunnu City is an urban ecosystem that breathes with its territory, a city that does not impose itself on the steppe but amplifies its strength, transforming water, light and morphology into living architecture.

A few kilometres from Ulaanbaatar and Zuunmood, Hunnu City will rise, a new urban constellation for 150,000 inhabitants covering 31,503 hectares: a city-landscape suspended between the endless steppes and the winding course of the Tuulu River, aligned with Mongolia's Vision 2050. Here, vastness is both a measure and an identity: expanses that vanish into the horizon, irregular reliefs sculpted by changing light, arid and vibrant soils where rarefaction becomes essence. In this almost immobile equilibrium, the Tuulu River introduces a fluid and generative energy, transforming the territory into a geography of slow and profound movements.

This interpretation gave rise to the founding idea of the project: the water channels become structure, shaping the landscape ridge and feeding a large urban wetland, the ecological heart of Hunnu City. To cope with extreme rainfall, the city adopts nature-based solutions: slight morphological variations that accommodate seasonal flooding, basins that fill and empty, spaces that shift with the seasons, becoming habitats when flooded and social places when dry. The landscape thus becomes a living organism, capable of generating biodiversity and regenerating communities.

The urban grid is the result of an adaptive combination of the classic grid and the Voronoi pattern; running through the centre is the Nomad Path, a significant ecological and cultural corridor that interprets the traditional movement of nomadic peoples.

At the city entrance, the landscape is pristine, evolving into an urban park and, finally, into a community spine, gradually shifting from wetlands and vegetation to a more mineral and urban character. Land art sculptures, pavilions and furnishings accompany the route as landmarks in the landscape. At the edge of the corridor are the Amid Od, “stars of life”: climate-controlled greenhouses inspired by yurts, transparent spheres that enclose tropical biomes and create habitable microclimates even in the harshest months, offering new scenarios for protected socialising.

Public space becomes a widespread principle, with every unbuilt area designed as an opportunity for interaction. Squares, courtyards, and paths between buildings define the urban rhythm with essential geometries that dialogue with the natural vegetation of the steppes, disciplining it without distorting it. The urban cell is defined at the edge of the agricultural belt by the steppe, while towards the centre, residences, services and nature intertwine.