An Urban Transformation: Yongqing Fang, Guangzhou, China

2023-04-12 | Lab D+H SH

Yongqing Fang is located in the center of Guangzhou old town, Ening Road District. The Ening road used to be the economic center of southern China when the port open during the Qing Dynasty. After 1950s, Ening road has experienced a huge recession and lost its prosperity. Lucy enough, the main street is redeveloped as the cultural street and become the landmark of Guangzhou again currently. However, the Alleyways connected to the main street still like a Refugee Camps which nobody Cares.

Our design is related one of the renovation projects of these old Alleyways, the N 99^th Ening Road, Yongqing Fang. The Location of the Yongqing Fang is nice. It is closely linked with the main street. It is also back to the famous National Cantonese Opera Museum. The home of the historical celebrity such as Jingwei Wang and Bruce Lee also located in the site. In the future, the biggest Starbucks going to introduced into this old neighborhood. At the same time, Vanke also propose an incubator, a hotel and an education center in this area. Another thing has to mention is that most of the old residence are stayed with the future residence. So, in the design we will face a unique topic: How to make old residence and new immigrant live together in this unique neighborhood? Also, how to effectively use the waste material from the demolition in the landscape design is another topic we should research about it.

1.Masterplan

In Yongqing Fang, The architecture style of the historic buildings and new buildings such as the Starbucks coffee, the incubators and the early education centers are totally different. That is why the integrity of the public space is extremely important. We should link these unique buildings and make the public space as a landmark which might make the site popular and does not affect the aborigines at the same time.

In order to make the complex site simpler, we layed the site into three systems: linkage system, cultural system and eco system. Streamline system propose a unique historical pavement to connect different buildings and surrounding communities; and cultural system create nods make people gather together; eco system create a green space in the roof top.

At the same time, we effectively use the site of waste, such as: tiles, brick, nature stone, and wood, and turn them into landscape elements.

In order to unify the style of the site, the landscape design needs one language throughout. Our inspiration comes from the unique skyline of Enning Road. Why not cut those skylines out as a silhouette and make this as our design language? “Cut” not only formed a unique signage system, “cut” also created four interesting open space: Historical silhouette: large wall fell into the water, Events silhouette: wood ladder, Recreational silhouette: roof garden, and People silhouette: Bruce lee ancestral entrance garden.

2. Details