The New Clark City development project is an ambitious project of the Philippine government to create a new master planned Smart city to decongest the current urban capital in Metro Manila. This is located in Pampanga and Tarlac close to where the largest US airbase outside of mainland USA, Clark Airbase was located.
The New Clark City (Phase 1) decorative concrete project covers almost 100,000 square meters, consisting of imprinted concrete in various complimenting shades of grey from the Bomanite color palette for the 5-meter-wide pedestrian sidewalk; and exposed aggregate/sandwash finish in Bomanite Brick Clay color for the 4-meter-widebike lane. Both the bike lane and the pedestrian walkway run parallel to each other throughout the New Clark City project.

 
The initial specification required only 20,000 square meters of imprinted concrete while the rest was intended to be a combination of concrete pavers, asphalt overlay for the bike lane, and granite tiles in places also for the pedestrian walkway. Through close work with, and education of both the owner and specifier, and after highlighting the enhanced durability, and the beauty and artistic capability of decorative concrete systems, and after creating custom imprint patterns for the job Cypress, Bomanite was able to convert the specification to replace the other intended finishes with the Bomanite decorative concrete systems. Ebony acid stain was used in various dilutions to hand touch certain areas to create the various degrees of colors shown in the project. As a final touch, a specially created imprint tool to create the "NEW CLARK CITY" logo finally helped to seal the deal.
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From a technical perspective the original specification called for installation using a 2" bonded topping, through discussions and explanation of technical aspects the customer agreed to change this to use instead, a monolithic pour thereby negating the possibility of any delamination and minimizing the potential for cracking etc.
The location is somewhat exposed on the open plains of Pampanga and being surrounded by hills and volcanoes on 3 sides meant that winds were naturally channeled through this area, which then required extreme close attention to be applied to the curing regime. Sources for clean potable water were also difficult and the water had to be brought in by tanker and stored at strategic locations around the project.
All of these points and with the pandemic included too, the entire project planning had to be very dynamic and responsive to address the various situations that arose. We had 6 teams pouring in various locations across the large site area, and pours had to be continuous in order to meet the customers expected schedule. Being a tropical country,the rains are unpredictable so site teams had to be ready at a moments notice to erect tents to protect the work areas from often-torrential rains.
The upcoming Streetscapes Issue of Landscape Architect and Specifier News saw many firms submit their projects for feature consideration. This project was not chosen for a Feature in the issue, but we at LandscapeArchitect.com thought the project deserved to be showcased online . . .