M50 Urban_Reno

The overall design concept aims to satisfy M50's future development requirements and to effectively guide M50's evolution as a famous landmark of art and culture. Our original plan has aimed to satisfy the conditions necessary for M50's continuing advance into the future, to effectively guide the function design of the area and the building renovation, to protect the basic characteristics of each building structure and to strengthen their typological significance. Thus, we hope to prolong this industrial environment's unique ambience as a kind of micro-environment within the city. Simultaneously, we seek to manage effectively the relationship between the Moganshan Road commercial land development and it's cultural function, encouraging the development of an overall synthesis of the area, and searching for a balanced approach to the development of the city's functionality. The use of a perspective based on reasoning and efficiency will lead to the formation of a city-space archetype where, both the buildings and the public, and the buildings and the Suzhou Creek, enjoy comfortable relations. This involves the forging of a sense of commonality between the buildings of Moganshan Road and the surrounding area, and developing an outward-radiating, forward-thinking centre of urban culture. Beginning in 2005, over the past three-and-a-half years, discussions between proprietors, designers, users and the public regarding how to advance the capacity for renewal and potential excavation have continued without pause. The design’s initial rationale has been challenged, reconsidered and finally, partially implemented. Over time, the plan of design has clarified and altered, just like the development of a living organism. A growing area such as this needs considerable attention, much like a developing baby. Compared with the usual speed of development in china the evolution of M50 is much slower and the work of ours is much more specific. We are incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to work at both the urban scale whilst also experimenting with small interventions on site. Our process begins with a structural framework and gradually evolves through the iterative process of ‘design, reengineering and re-design’, and eventually, we pause and look at the vision of the future.