Beijing Cidi Memo iTown / Atelier Liu Yuyang Architects

Architects: Atelier Liu Yuyang Architects
Location: Chaoyang District,Beijing,China
Design Principal: Liu Yuyang
Project Architect: Li Ning
Design Team: Che Peiping, WuYaping, Lian Funing, Yang Ke, Che Jin, Luo Kun, Wang Xiaoling
Area: 6300.0 m2
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Zhu Siyu, Xia Zhi

Structure Consultant: Shanghai Yuangui Structural Des. Firm Inc.
Lightning Consultant: UNOLAI DESIGN
Contractor: Hebei Zhongbao Construction Co., Ltd
Client: Beijing Brahma Real Estate Management Co., Ltd.
Cost: 23,000,000 RMB

From the architect. The project is located between Beijing’s 4th East Ring Road and 5th Ring East Road. Serval Railroads intersect and divide the site into fragments. We call the site the unculivated land, isolated and forgotten, while the rest of the urban fabric undergoes a rapid development. Her primitive vitality is hidden in these broken warehouses and we saw the possibilities to become a secret garden in the urban desert.

The site, covering an area of 140,000 square meters, will be revitalized though bringing in cultural and creative industries.As the first to intervene on this site, we were involved in the building renovation on ‘Startup Block’ and interior design on the Sales Office. The Startup Block contains three zones, Zone A as sales office and boutique hotel, Zone B as mockup office, Zone C as restaurant, the totall area is 6,000 square meters.

Model. Image Courtesy of Atelier Liu Yuyang Architects

One of the greatest challenge for the concept design is tailoring the complex warehouse space to fit for the new purpose, as well as increasing the overall F.A.R without alter the building footprint. We connected these warehouses, restructured the spacial ogranization and infused public program as the heart of the ‘Startup Block’.These strategies brings forward the resulting ‘Station’ space.

Steel structure enabled us with greater creative flexibility, and naturally became our first choice for renovation project. The silver vaulted carriage-like design is driven from the image from the passing train. the vault is also a reflection of the historical archetype of temple, library and stations. In the sales office, a variant of the vault is design to house a floating mezzanine. The arc element is also applied in elevation design as well as door and window details, giving the rough industrial mass a more refined and humane touch.

The composition of the facade is the composition of the old structure and the new, the composition of heavy masonry and light curtain wall. We used volanic rock, grey brick and red brick to underline the heaviness and roughness of the original masonry. On the added volumes, curtain walls with different scale of translucency, ranging from grey steel sheet, polycarbonate panel to glass, is applied. The white floating mezzanine is the spirit of the sales office, theatricalized with lightings and materiality. The spotlight washing the silver acoustic ceiling, along with linear light embellishing the mezzanine, injects an artistic fantasy into the otherwise demure architecture.

The ‘Station’ as an expended space from the sales office, is reserved for business talks.The nine-meter high west curtain wall faces the central rail track, giving the ‘station’ space its name. We placed a triangular terrazzo bar and a double-sided clock as the center piece.The ceiling is finished with backlit corrugated polycarbonate, adorned with clock and spherical pendant lamps. Inside the ‘station’, with the train roams pass by occasionally, we imagine a sureal retro experience.