When "ants" meet fashion, factories become art harbors

Xinhua News Agency, Harbin, January 20 Title: When "ants" meet fashion, factories become art harbors

Xinhua News Agency reporters Qiang Yong and Zhu Yue

Walking into the Red Square Park in Harbin's Xicheng District, you will be greeted by industrial elements with a sense of historical vicissitudes. Rusty giant "ants" assembled from old industrial parts, towering water towers, and white smoke wafting over red brick factories all tell the story of the past here. Walking among them, the figure of workers working feverishly in the roar of the machine appeared in front of you...

Xicheng Red Square is located in the original site of Harbin Machinery Factory. Now Xicheng Red Square, there are garden-like commercial spaces, a variety of "tide signs", art galleries, folk landscapes, coffee shops... Whether you like retro or are avant-garde, you will feel the magic of "time travel" here. Here, you can turn your entrepreneurial dreams into reality, you can experience urban life in the industrial atmosphere, you can taste the aromatic roast duck in the quaint red brick factory building, and drink wine with a crimson glow.

The art port in Red Square in Xicheng has retained the historical style of the old factory building and transformed into an art harbor composed of "one planet", "two streets" and "three workshops". "One Planet" tells the story of urban industry and inherits the spirit of "ants gnawing on bones"; the front street of "two streets" shows art and fashion, and the back street shows the nightlife of the city; and the "three workshops" display master art, mass art and living art respectively.

According to Wang Limei, general manager of Harbin Hongbo Commercial Group, in the 1950s, Harbin Machinery Factory was still a "small factory with four nothings": no large factory, no large machine tool crane, no casting steel equipment, no engineer. In order to ensure the smooth completion of the production task of Angang large gears, the workers repeatedly studied and boldly innovated, and assembled a combined movable machine tool with a small machine tool, which greatly shortened the production cycle and opened up an innovative path of "making the big with small", which is a vivid embodiment of the spirit of "ants gnawing bones". This "building block" machine tool has supported the production of steel and industrial and mining in more than 10 provinces, and has made important contributions to accelerating socialist construction.

With the development of the times and the adjustment of industrial structure, the Harbin Machinery Union Machinery Factory was relocated and transformed, and the old factory buildings were idle, but the industrial culture has long become an indelible gene of the city.

The protection and utilization of industrial heritage is a systematic project that needs to be integrated with new formats and models. Since 2010, harbin Hongbo Commercial Group has carefully designed and constructed for many years, on the basis of protecting the characteristic buildings of the old factory buildings, integrating retro industrial style and modern art, so that the old factory building has been reborn, and the long-sealed industrial relics have reappeared in youth.

With a construction area of nearly 450,000 square meters, Xicheng Red Square, led by art and culture, with innovative business as the main body, fashion industry as the extension, and old factory buildings as the carrier, has held various art activities such as photography exhibitions, modern and contemporary art exhibitions, and the Harbin Fashion Week, which is hosted by Xicheng Red Square, is famous.

The industrial heritage here is a reminder of the glory days of the past, and today, it still exudes a charming style.