Tianjian Square is located at the foot of Baiyun Mountain in the north of Guangzhou, covering a total area of more than 600，000 square meters. After 20 years of development, the plot has been transformed from the earliest freight yard to leading market of hardware for decorative materials and gradually upgraded to a comprehensive service community covering commercial office, professional market, residence, entertainment, cultural activities, art exhibition, community sharing, public garden and other integration. Tianjian Square witnessed the whole process from traditional productivity to commercial trade and then to the era of information media. Being Architects has been involved and responsible for the overall renovation and renewal plan of Tianjian Square since 2016. The scale covers XL- planning, L-landscape, M-building, s-interior and XS device., Like natural growth, continuous renovation makes Tianjian Square gradually become a livable and ommercial art garden community in the city.
A / B building was built in 2000 when exhibition and trade type commercial space prevailed. As the main building of hardware shop for decorative materials, it is a landmark entering the south gate of Tianjian Square. The interior layout is a typical traditional commercial square, with the main passenger streamline as the central lighting axis, the outside surrounding branches as the secondary streamline, and in-between the two lines are full of commercial shops. The former square in front is quite small, in order to make a large turning space for heavy-duty goods vehicle, and because there is no environment, it’s almost empty at ordinary times.With the impact of online consumption on the retail industry, the market format has changed dramatically. Tianjian Square hopes to reshape the image of the main entrance, renovate and upgrade A / B builiding, tap the use potential of the original building, break the original spatial layout, redistrict the regions, add unique fresh elements, and make it a new office display complex that combine rent office, retail display, commercial space and community activities.
In the rapid process of urban renewal in China, most of the buildings and sites that need to be renovated do not have too much historical value and site characteristics. Moreover, the budget is tight, and the transformation way of wearing clothes and hats can be seen everywhere. How to deal with the renovation and renewal of such buildings and sites, and how to find another entry point at a low cost to reshape the spirit of the site and form a new community space has always been a research topic for us. A kind of order intrudes into the original order and forms a new order. The design hopes to establish a new order by intervening a series of man-made abstract art mountain devices in to the space of original building. Orderly mountain devices break down the original rigid form and reshape the impression of the overall space. As a new medium, mountain devices intervene in the original space, reorganize, load and connect the new space-time, so that people’s movement, participation and interaction behavior translate each other, forming a new, three-dimensional, multi-dimensional space with emotional perception. These experimental mountain devices are of different shapes and similar repetition. They form new memory points of the site. While serializing, they also imply the unity of the whole system. They blur the boundaries of landscape, architecture, interior and artistic installations. Design hopes to provide another possibility and model in the wave of urban renewal, in addition to the “standard” method of wearing clothes and hats and rapid construction.
The outer square is the starting point of the mountain devices sequence, which is defined as the landmark of the main entrance. Its extension is appropriately expanded, landscape and traffic is reorganized to create a large garden of the south gate. After renovation, it is divided into five districts: water feature, coffee garden, entrance drop-off area, activity square and leisure negotiation area. The scale of the square is reasonably controlled. The view is limited by the half height water feature. The whole entrance area can be seen on one side, and the garden path can be seen on the other side. During daytime employees drink coffee and talk under the trees, while surrounding residents walk and chat at night.
The edge of the plaza is defined by a continuous art folding wall that is high on the center and low on both sides. It forms the background of the plaza together with a 3m high mountain alike water feature. At the same time, it also effectively isolates the messy external environment and unpleasant traffic noise. The mountain form is composed of continuous deformation of different triangle volumes. The paper-cut abstract art folding wall is intermittently inserted into it, making the space more flexible, shaping different activity areas and viewing angles, and recording the stamp of the tree shadow.
Coffee garden and leisure area are respectively on both sides of the building, which are closely connected with the interior space. They are the extension of coffee bar and business center. Through the extension at the bottom of the mountain, it forms a semi-enclosed space with the surrounding landscape hills. A unique landscaped garden is formed by planting different types of trees.
The entrance area is composed of several groups of different sizes of abstract mountains, which is a triangle shape composed by two metal sides and a lawn surface. The direction of lawn surface is different, which is leading people walking from different directions into the entrance. The V-shaped canopy floats on the mountain group, defining the pedestrian entrance, vehicle passage and drop off area. The semitransparent ceiling and mirror stainless steel ceiling make the entrance space mottled with light, whirling with trees, swaying with wind and full of vitality.
While the mountain device disintegrates the original rigid space, it also creates and reconstructs a new order for people and space. Mountain sequence is not only a visual guide of space, but also a shared space with different functions, which forms a variety of daily interaction with the original space and human behavior mode. The intervention of these devices with new functional space makes each mountain have a unique memory code, forming a number of new spatial coordinates in the original homogeneous space.
The rich and varied colors of the four seasons mountains are designed into the installation sequence. The setting of landscape elements combines with the natural light of atrium, hoping to give more natural attributes to the site and make people consciously and instinctively associate with the natural ecological environment. A few color of conflict, arousing people’s potential emotions, hopes to bring a sense of pleasure. Each device is an independent mountain landscape. After the formation of repeated sequence, it makes people walk inside as if they are in the close-up, mid-range and long-term view in the painting, standing on this mountain and looking at the other. The design of different openings forms different views like borrowed views, opposite views and frame views, which makes people have different feelings step by step in the space.
Each mountain device carries different spaces of public participation. Front desk, reception, negotiation, golf, book bar, public exhibition hall, roadshow platform, snooker bar, meeting room, leisure bar, gallery, indoor rock climbing, parent-child activities and a series of diversified social activity spaces are put into it. They are distributed at different heights of the mountain, and the combination forms of different scenes also bring richness and diversity to the shared space. The design hopes to reshape and activate the original space through people’s daily participation in the mountain activities, so that it can become a space suitable for the new shared commune.
Project location: Tianjian Square, No.283, Rd Shatai, Baiyun District, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
Design year: 2018
Year Built: 2019
