Renovation of SMOORE Liutang Industrial Park Shenzhen / CM Design

Curated by 韩双羽 - HAN Shuangyu

Architects: CM Design
Area: 13658 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs:Chao Zhang
Contractor / Builders: Tengyu Construction Engineering Co. Ltd., Dongguan Guanjiang Decoration Design Engineering Co. Ltd., ShenZhen Craftsman Construction Co.Ltd.

Text description provided by the architects. SMOORE Liutang Industrial Park locates in Xixiang Street, Baoan District, Shenzhen, at the northeast corner of the Liutang Park and adjacent to the Christian Baoan Church. The project covers an area of 5,017 square meters, and has a total floor area of 13,658 square meters, including 6,260 square meters in Building 2 and 7,398 square meters in Building 3. In the 1980-90s, a large number of small and medium-sized manufacturing plants came out in this area, which however, has been gradually surrounded by new residential communities, parks, offices, and related infrastructures due to the rapid process of urbanization. As a result, the area has changed from the outskirt of the city to the center, production workshops began to move away, and the old industrial buildings were facing urban renewal and function upgrade.

The design needs to form a new relationship between the buildings. The industrial park consists of two separate factories, walls between them were removed to form a pedestrian loop in the park. A roadway through the bottom of Building 1 connects the two sites closely, creating an interconnected and convenient freight network.

Renovation of SMOORE Liutang Industrial Park Shenzhen / CM Design - Image 19 of 28 — exploded axonometric

Renovation of SMOORE Liutang Industrial Park Shenzhen / CM Design - Exterior Photography, Brick — © Chao Zhang

The characteristics and materials of the original buildings were carefully preserved. New design elements were applying to the ground floor, passage facade, and windows to contrast and resonate with the preserved building, which was also a response and respect to the original texture. The first floor is the equipment storage and mechanical loading area, rust steel plate was used on the wall as a skin for protection. A trumpet-shaped entrance was built into Building 1 as a public area for trucks to pass and load goods, connecting the two sites of the park.

The most featured colorful mosaic facade on the second floor and above remains in use after cleaning and restoration. As an important component of the facade, renovation of the windows had to simultaneously maintain their original dimensions and show a new image. Original windows were replaced by different angled windows, with which dynamic scenes of the city could be portrayed and reflected from various directions, presenting a wide variety of facade forms. The design did not conform to the usual stereotype of an industrial park, giving the buildings vitality and more expression.

As a symbol of SMOORE’s atomization technology, the "Fog Valley" was put into the narrow strip between the two buildings, which were both covered by a curtain wall composed of aluminum meshes, became the landmark of the park. Six kinds of mesh panel units with different angles were customized due to indoor lighting and sight view requirements, greatly reduced the construction difficulty and cut down the cost.

The wall on the north side of the park was removed to form an outdoor square. The single-story dilapidated building at the edge was reinforced and converted into electric room and garbage station. A completely new boundary of the park was integrated with the facade of the first floor of the buildings. Badminton and basketball fields as well as rest stools were arranged in the site to provide a leisure and fitness place for the employees.

The project was an exploration of the urban industrial buildings reuse at a low cost. Preservation, restoration, intervention, and superposition of different architecture forms, materials, and textures in different eras under the languages that emphasize functionality, leave a memory for the rapid development of the city, and make the current urban industrial buildings more thickness and continuous.