TONGZHOU WAREHOUSE RENOVATION
Beijing, China
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TONGZHOU WAREHOUSE RENOVATION
Design Time: 2020.11 - 2021.05
Project Location: Beijing, China
Principal Architect: Ma Ning
Design Team: Jiechong Yu, Dongyuan Guo, Yachen Liu, Zhu Ke
The base of the project is located in the "warehouse" area of Tongzhou. The thirteen granaries in the capital used to be royal granaries storing imperial grain. These granaries jointly carry the heavy responsibility of the capital's grain storage and maintain the normal operation of the ancient capital Beijing. Now, these former large and numerous granaries have completely disappeared, only a few remnants of the walls are still standing in the streets. In fact, it is surrounded by residences with no sign of granaries.
The complex within the site has been abandoned for many years. To the north is a horseshoe-shaped warehouse building, and to the south are side-by-side dilapidated factories. Although they have long lost their original functions, they have formed a urban theme under this geographical location.
The whole base is planned as an artistic creative industry park combining office and business use. Our design preserves the form, structure, and mechanism of the original factory building on the site and refurbishes the original facade materials. In the public space outside the building, we introduced a flexible "ribbon" -- this ribbon starts from the courtyard of the horseshoe-shaped warehouse building on the north side, undulates, slowly extends, connects the square, and then links the gap between the factories on the south side, becoming a new urban public space.
The structure of the ribbon, like the shape of water ripples, flows into the distance. On the inside of the corrugated skeleton are petal-like secondary structural modules that hang translucent membrane materials. The transparency of membrane material is gradually changing from the edge of the roof to the center on the overall layout. Different softness of light and shadow filtered by membrane materials with different transparent properties dance in the courtyard.
In the daytime, under the irradiation of the sun, in the flow of time, the dynamic light and shadow projected by the ribbon ripples in the surrounding, slowly flowing. At night, the corrugated light strip on the ground, along with the light reflected from the metal structure on top, reflects the vitality of the new public space for the site and its surroundings.