HeyTown Art Center
How to regenerate in urban fields where the collision of old and new culture happens" This project tries to bring up an answer for how to grow an effective cultural landmark that links to the past at the same time functions well for the ever-shifting contemporary urban landscape.
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Background

The site is located only 5km east to Beijing?s CBD, and is right in the middle of an isolated and forgotten diamond-shaped land intersected by serval railroads and divided into fragments. While the rest of the city undergoes a rapid development, this urban enclave hidden in some declining industrial plant buildings have remain uncultivated in the past 3 decades.
The client?s long-term goal is to regenerate these spaces though bringing in cultural and creative industries, so that it connects the surrounding neighborhoods currently separated by the railroads, and gradually building up a mixed-use community of 140,000 square meters. As the lead architect for the 2nd stage of the community, we try to revitalize this urban enclave through weaving together retail, recreational, F&B, and creative spaces for people with different needs. This Art Center was proposed in the core of the creative industry zone that infused diverse public program into a larger mixed-use community. Photography by © Haiting Sun
Design Strategy

Our approach starts with answering the question of “How to transform an industrial space for productivity, to an art space tar...