Cover news reporter Zhang Jie
The Beijing Winter Olympics are in full swing. Careful viewers will find that in the live footage of Gu Ailing's championship freestyle ski jump, there is a high chimney behind it. That's in the Shougang Industrial Park in Beijing. Shougang's old factory has been transformed into a multi-functional cultural park with distinctive characteristics and transformed into the office area of the Organizing Committee of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games and one of the venues for the Winter Olympic Games.
Located in the Shougang Industrial Park, the Free Ski Jump is the first competition venue in the history of the Winter Olympics to be directly combined with the reuse of industrial heritage, and will become the world's first ski jump to be permanently retained and used after the Beijing Winter Olympics. From the steel-making plant where steel splashes and the molten steel flows, to the winter training center with ice-making refrigeration and cold air, the once-silent "Ten Mile Steel City" has transformed into a vibrant Shougang Park, playing a moving "Song of Ice and Fire".
People generally have the quality of cherishing cultural relics and monuments, but it is easy to ignore the industrial heritage that is close by. Perhaps faced with cold and rusty steel plates and dilapidated factory buildings, some people will feel that this represents obsolescence and obsolescence. However, more and more people have realized that industrial heritage carries the transformation of the productive forces of human society and records the history of cities. To protect industrial heritage is to preserve the memory of the times. Moreover, the old factory, which seems to the average person to no longer have value, is a valuable resource and rare space for creatives to inspire creativity and nurture creative industries. For example, the famous Ted Museum of Modern Art in London, England, was converted from a thermal power plant that could have been demolished, and after several years of operation and development, it has not only become one of the art museums with the largest audience in the world, but also driven the area on the south bank of the River Thames from a poor and decaying old industrial area to a rich cultural prosperity area.
In China, since the Western Affairs Movement in the second half of the 19th century, especially in different historical periods after the founding of the People's Republic of China, valuable industrial heritage has been left. These industrial heritages are concentrated in old industrial cities, which not only witness the unusual development of modern industrialization on the mainland, but also contain rich historical and cultural values. With the acceleration of urbanization in mainland China, the protection of industrial heritage is also facing many difficulties. In the collision of practice, there are also excellent cases that combine the protective reuse of industrial heritage with the construction of urban culture. With precise planning and positioning, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo successfully led the industrial transfer of traditional heavy industries along the Huangpu Riverside with a significant boost of the Expo, provided a strong impetus for the urban renewal process in the region, and became the best case of urban renewal and protection of industrial heritage in China through large-scale international activities.
In 2019, Beijing Television invited Shan Jixiang to participate in a "urban rejuvenation" theme program called "I Am a Planner", and he gladly agreed. In this program, Shan Jixiang and the guests of the program went deep into a specific neighborhood of the capital as "visitors", interacted with local residents, communicated with more than 20 planners, deeply observed and studied the past and present lives of specific planning projects, and analyzed the far-reaching impact of these projects and cases on the city, urban people and urban life. After the first season of 12 episodes was broadcast, it was well received. Shan Jixiang said that because of this program, he has developed a new understanding of familiar "old things" in walking, communicating and experiencing. Therefore, he wrote a series of manuscripts on the memories, reflections and experiences of the program creation process.
Illustrations in the book
At the beginning of the Spring Festival in 2022, China Encyclopedia Publishing House published Shan Jixiang's new book" Habitat in Beijing: Awakening Industrial Heritage. In this book, Shan Jixiang focuses on the story of the protective reuse of industrial heritage in Beijing's urban construction from the perspective of urban planning. The first part describes the "Song of Ice and Fire" that built the "New World of Ice and Snow" in Shougang Park, and the second part tells the process of transforming 751 Industrial Heritage into a cultural and creative gathering place in the eastern part of the city.
Many people know that Shan Jixiang served as the director of the Palace Museum, but they may not know that he graduated from tsinghua university with a major in urban planning and design, a doctor of engineering, a senior architect, and a registered urban planner. Growing up in Beijing, Shan Jixiang has a strong affection for many of Beijing's buildings and neighborhoods. When Shan Jixiang studied in Japan, the topic of his graduation thesis was research on the conservation and utilization of historical districts. After the work, there were several transfers between the urban planning department and the cultural relics protection department. He has also participated in and witnessed many meaningful activities or projects, such as the establishment of historical and cultural protection areas for hutong courtyards on both sides of the central axis of Beijing; such as planning construction control zones (also known as buffer zones) on both sides of the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven to prevent the discordant intrusion of newly built tall buildings or large-scale building complexes; such as launching the "Love Beijing City, Donate City Wall Bricks" campaign, calling on everyone to send back the city wall bricks that were taken home in the past and repair the ruins of the Ming City Wall together..." My experience of Beijing's urban planning is not only a faint nostalgia in childhood, but also a rational thinking and deep understanding on the basis of work practice. He wrote in the book.
At the end of the book, Shan Jixiang also shared his profound thinking on the methods of industrial heritage protection, believing that it "requires public attention and participation, the owner of industrial heritage is not only the government, everyone is the master, only the residents consciously guard, in order to defend the dignity of industrial heritage, dignified industrial heritage has strong vitality." Only by closely linking the protection of industrial heritage with the construction of urban culture, especially with the lives of the public, can we find a real foundation for the protection and utilization of industrial heritage, can industrial heritage become an integral part of public life, can industrial heritage become the core and soul of urban culture, and can cities become the real home of industrial heritage. ”