The Paper's reporter Lu Yi
Liqi Zhu, President of ARQ Architects China
"City" refers to defensive fortifications, and "city" refers to the place of trade, and the two are superimposed to form a "city".
Zhu Liqi, president of ARQ Architects China, said that cities are the product of economic development to a certain stage, essentially human trading centers and gathering centers, so commercial space is crucial to cities.
As one of the pioneers of globalization in the field of architecture, ARQ's works have spread to more than 60 countries on five continents, and have successively created landmark commercial bodies such as Brickell City Center in Miami, USA, Another City in Hong Kong, China, International Finance Center in Seoul, South Korea, and Taikoo Hui in Guangzhou, China. Under the impact of e-commerce and the epidemic, the traditional commercial space is facing challenges, ARQ has also begun to explore the renewal of commercial space, ruihong tiandi sun palace opened last year has become a network of internet celebrities to punch cards, the old market has changed into The West District of Sanlitun Taikoo Li in Beijing, and the rock Bund source that has grown back in the texture of 11 historical preservation buildings will be unveiled this year.
Aerial view of the Bund Source area
In Zhu Liqi's view, inclusiveness is the key word in the renewal of commercial space, and the inclusion of people, the tolerance of time, the tolerance of climate, and the tolerance of future evolution possibilities are the essence of the continuous vitality of commercial space.
The "box" that penetrates into the city
More than 100 years ago, the legend of Chanel began with "No. 31 Kangpeng Street"; more than 200 years ago, CHAUMET settled at No. 15 Place Vendôme and opened the "Jewelry Box of Paris"; more than 1,000 years ago, Liu Yong described Qiantang as "City Column Pearl, Huying Luoqi" as "Qiantang prosperous...
Before the advent of the industrial age, the city's commercial space was lined with streets and scattered in squares, and with the popularity of the automobile, the momentum of suburbanization in the United States forced retail commerce to spread to suburban transportation hubs, marked by Sears's "ribbon" center on Chicago's suburban highways, and large-scale shopping malls came into being.
Large, complete, centralized, Internet + era, large-scale commercial space is still the trend of the future? Zhu Liqi believes that this problem can not be generalized, in China, especially in large cities with large population density and tight land resources, the business in the city center will still be dominated by high-density "boxes", and the Ruihong Tiandi Sun Palace, which appeared last autumn, is a "box" that continues to infiltrate the city.
The first is the exterior of the building, considering the huge volume of the sun palace, the design weakens the collision of the building on various street corners and urban interfaces with a soft curve, and integrates into the surrounding environment in an affinity and feminine posture. In terms of shape, the convex and concave shape makes the building look like a winding mountain range or overlapping terraces, rather than "a 100-meter-high wall", and the design of the layers of retreat and layer change makes people on the ground unable to see the roof, avoiding a sense of oppression to the community and the city.
The roof of the Palace of the Sun "disappears" from the ground, because in the ARQ's conception, the roof of the lotus leaf-like pavilion is not aimed at the perspective of the ground, but is left to people who overlook from above. As the last piece of the puzzle of Ruihong New Town's business, the building is surrounded by high-rise residences from Phase I to Phase 10 of Ruihong New Town, considering the fifth façade of the building when looking at the Sun Palace from a high place, ARQ uses the design of the super atrium to express its symbolism and symbolism in the external presentation, while creating a unique spatial experience for the interior space.
"Indoor space outdoor, outdoor space indoor" is Zhu Liqi's summary of the design of the Sun Palace, internally, 5,000 square meters of huge canopy, 3-story high super atrium, the lighting roof is like three lotus leaves blooming, three columns like towering trees to hold it up, the blue sky is like a wash, the sun pours down, the block-style shop layout, open public space and a large number of green landscapes, making the top floor space like a huge open-air square.
In the mid-1990s, Shui On Land launched two urban renewal projects in Downtown Shanghai, taipingqiao Project and Ruihong New Town, the former offering the urban living room represented by Xintiandi, and the latter rewriting the fate of the "downtown shantytown", building a vibrant city with a construction area of 1.7 million square meters and a population of nearly 10,000 households in 25 years.
As the last commercial puzzle of Ruihong New City, what problems and challenges has the Sun Palace encountered in terms of design? Zhu Liqi said that the 25 years since Ruihong New Town rose from the ground, coinciding with the era of rapid development of Shanghai's urbanization construction, with the construction of rail transit, the North Bund super planning and other supporting upgrades, regional upgrades, Ruihong New Town has also continuously adjusted the planning, such as: after the addition of Linping Road Station of Metro Line 4, readjust the layout, so that the subway becomes a link between the tandem community; adjust the overall planning to actively increase the proportion of commercial, and transform a residential-oriented living community into a multi-functional and complex type covering office, commercial retail, high-end living residences , world-class vibrant neighborhood.
Under the superposition of transportation, planning and other favorable advantages, the positioning of the Sun Palace has risen from the commercial center of the radiation area to the life landmark and trend center of The radiation Of Hongkou and even the whole of Shanghai, and how to attract the crowd has become a problem in front of the designer.
Increasing the proportion of restaurants is the first plan that has been thought of, but this is almost the prevailing strategy of all shopping malls at present, and most of the restaurants are chains, and thousands of stores are still unable to form their own attraction.
In Zhu Liqi's view, the design essence of many commercial spaces is shop + corridor, and under the impact of e-commerce, the purpose of shoppers to offline consumption is not clear, the layout of restaurant A + restaurant B + restaurant C can not meet consumers, he tries to travel through time and space to find inspiration, thinking about how people overseas eat, how people in the past ate.
He found that people like to travel and shop in Europe, because the city there retains the traditional commercial space, shops stand along the street, people hang out aimlessly, tired to find a square café to bask in the sun; he feels the fireworks of the city in The Lei Yue Mun Seafood City in Hong Kong, which is like a lawn market in Europe, where people can buy strawberries from farmers, seafood from fishermen, and even watch the whole process of food cooking. With this vision of returning to the basics, in the end, Zhu Liqi built the top ecological theme dining block into an open-air market in the air, under the lighting roof, an open square, different sizes of blocks stacked on top of each other, staggered, hidden between the green plants, in the relaxed and natural block-style commercial atmosphere, people explore, discover, immerse themselves in it.
Different from other shopping malls that radiate throughout Shanghai, in the super community of Ruihong New City, the Sun Palace also has the function of serving the community, so while creating a strollable neighborhood experience and creating a long life, ARQ also designs a vertical transportation system to facilitate people's rapid arrival and create an efficient urban life. There are both slow and fast, which is the inclusiveness emphasized by Zhu Liqi, and an inclusive heart can bring more diverse people and more lasting vitality to the commercial space.
Zhu Liqi said that because of the special geographical location and positioning, the consumers of the Sun Palace include office workers who work in the surrounding areas and commute by subway, as well as community residents who drag their families and mouths, both trend pioneers who come from all over the city to punch in, and aunts and uncles who pick up and drop off their children to school. Unlike the shopping malls that blindly emphasize the trend and are tall, the Sun Palace does not have a clear positioning and restrictions on the crowd, in Zhu Liqi's concept, at noon on weekdays, the surrounding white-collar workers can efficiently solve a healthy and delicious lunch here, and in the afternoon, the aunt and uncle who picks up the children can sit here and buy a piece of bread.
"At the rental level in big cities, no commercial entity can survive on weekends alone. People come on weekdays and people come on weekends, you can't say 7x24 hours, at least during the business period to maintain the flow of people in the space, increase the frequency of space use. ”
Respect history and activate history
Urban construction over the past 30 years has brought rapid changes to China, and at the same time, it has also brought about a series of urban problems. Asked about the difficulties of urban renewal, especially commercial renewal in China, Zhu Liqi believes that the biggest problem is that too many similar buildings were built at the same time.
Large cities in Europe and the United States usually go through hundreds of years or more of the construction process, and they have enough time to test the problems of a new building form and property form. In China, often before the problem was exposed, certain buildings were copied in large quantities, such as in the late 1990s and early 1990s, when a large number of "department stores" sprang up in the commercial centers of various cities.
"These buildings are small in size, cramped in space, and often located in the center of the business district, so how to activate and affect the commercial atmosphere of the entire business circle and even the entire city is a problem."
Beijing Yaxiu Building, which was transformed by ARQ, is a representative of this type, as a clothing wholesale market with the same name as Silk Street, Yaxiu Building is an important project for urban renewal and commercial iteration in Sanlitun area, and the completion of the renovation of the project not only marks the further expansion of Sanlitun business district, but also represents the continuous upgrading of Sanlitun area into a new stage.
The latest identity of Yaxiu Building is Sanlitun Taikoo Li West District, which echoes with Taikoo Li South District and North District, constituting the trend center of Beijing's business, art and culture, in Zhu Liqi's view, this unique advantage is a double-edged sword - if the commercial attraction is not integrated with other factors such as space, format, passenger flow, etc., then the West End may become an isolated point in the project, and even form some "corners" that consumers are reluctant to visit, but weaken the overall commercial value of the business district.
Transparency has become the problem-breaking idea of ARQ. The architectural image of Yaxiu Building is a huge scale tin box, its periphery is wrapped by a curtain wall, in order to better integrate into the south and north districts, ARQ reproduced the original appearance of its step-by-step retreat, and dismantled the original flat and single façade, with a staggered, varied cube, implanted a fashion gene for the shape of the building.
At the same time, in terms of materials, the façade of the building mainly uses white aluminum panels, translucent U-shaped glass and ordinary transparent glass, which are consistent with the design language of Taikoo Li South District, and are interwoven with each other with the help of transparent vision.
The embodiment of the transparent technique inside is the addition of a huge atrium on the east side of the building, which serves as a gathering point for people in both the east and south directions, forming a visual connection with the southern district of Taikoo Li and the traffic flow line. In the original big box building, very little natural light could be cast into the interior, and the building was almost completely enclosed. By placing the atrium, the space from the second basement floor to the sixth floor above ground is connected, breaking the internal blockage of the original building and fully activating the commercial atmosphere with a transparent and bright indoor experience.
If beijing Yaxiu Building records the commercial changes of the wholesale market after the reform and opening up, the Bund in Shanghai is full of thicker historical memory and cultural language. The Rock Bund Source project includes 11 historic buildings and 6 new buildings, among which the Women's YMCA Building was designed by Chinese-American architect Mr. Li Jinpei, which combines modern architectural shapes and silhouettes with Chinese art styles, and the Asian Cultural Society Building, as the earliest museum in Shanghai, was a famous cultural exchange center at that time.
How to create new works in harmony with old buildings with different styles, rich colors and characteristics, Zhu Liqi is once again facing the test.
"In the historical landscape area, the new building complex should be in harmony with the old building, and the style of the new building is far more important than the personality highlighting itself, we did not take the method of contrast, at the same time, blindly imitating the historical building is not the right way."
While preserving the characteristics of contemporary architecture, ARQ reflects the respect for historical buildings with the unity of volume and the echo of style. In terms of height, all new buildings are not exceeded by the commanding heights of the adjacent Guanglu Building; in terms of volume, the new building retreats in the horizontal direction to form a retreat, increasing the vertical sense of the façade and further enriching the building shape, and more importantly, making the volume of the new building lighter, so that the pedestrian perspective can maintain comfort and transparency, bringing a better sense of neighborhood experience.
Stylistically, ARQ extracts the lines of the old building façade and interprets it throughout the new building façade, for example, in the façade design of the tower, the upright vertical lines are attached to the clay tiles, so that it echoes the True Light Guangxue Building with art deco style, Gothic revival technique.
Zhu Liqi believes that the main points of the current urban renewal are, first of all, the identification and determination of historical buildings, that is, the protection, retention or demolition of the "old" remains; secondly, after confirming the problem of "old", the control of the scale of "new".
"There is basically a consensus on the pursuit of quality, and for quantity, how much increment is appropriate? Is the more the merrier? After the update, what impact will it have on the surrounding area, and can municipal facilities such as transportation meet these increases? ”
The control of increments helps to crack the harmonious symbiosis between the old city and the emerging building complex. In 2022, on the banks of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, ARQ's Hangzhou Yinglan Center next to the millennium ancient temple will be launched, and at the same time, Sanlitun West District and Rock Bund Source will also be fully put into use.
Editor-in-charge: Chen Yun
Proofreader: Ding Xiao