Located at the intersection of North Shaanxi Road and Kangding Road in Shanghai, the project is a typical case of urban renewal and industrial upgrading through the renovation and expansion of old buildings and the injection of new cultural and creative service industries. The current site is a mixture of dilapidated warehouses, factories and residential buildings with security risks. The change of property rights and users over the past century gradually blurred the original urban context, but at the same time created a rich and mixed neighborhood space and architectural form. The project is adjacent to a historical building ensemble with eclectic style in the concession period, the original Jiangning Branch of Shanghai Police Office, as well as the former General Security / Work Camp, and the original site of the Police Repair Factory, which has been almost demolished.

The core concept of the scheme is based on the recognition of the layered and mixed form of urban physical space gradually formed with social changes. The design avoids removing the marks left by various historical factors in the site. Instead, it extracts the representative spatial or architectural elements as the design language, and by collage, presents a new dynamic urban meeting point based on the timeline.

In terms of urban morphology, independent redrawing and development of private parcels make the most important part of the Shanghai modern urban space features - the blocks' multi-functions and rich relativity, as well as various architectural forms, whose cultural references closely related to individual differences and daily life, rather than empty memorials.

Prof. LIU Gang at College Of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University