Once home to Asia’s biggest cement factory, an awkward waterfront industrial zone in Shanghai is now a stylish culture and leisure district that uses the site’s old, monolithic structures to its advantage.
Just completed, the 45,000-sq-m “GATE M Dream Center” masterplanned by Dutch architect MVRDV makes features of the legacy structures while creating spaces for people to enjoy themselves amongst them beside the Huangpu River.
It even uses unfinished structures from a prior failed development.
“It was clear from the start that there was a lot of value leftover in the buildings that were already there – we didn’t want to demolish things just because it might be simpler, because that means more carbon, more waste,” said Jacob van Rijs, MVRDV founder.
“Our challenge was to bring these pieces together and make them work as a single area, because they were an awkward pairing. We turned the newer buildings into the backdrop, so that the industrial behemoths could be the exclamation points.”
The M Factory will have a food market and restaurant on the ground floor and a column-free cultural space on the upper floor.
Old silos will become a rock-climbing centre.
Unfinished new buildings from the cancelled development will be shops, restaurants and hotels, with green roofs and outdoor terraces. A skatepark will also be built.
Areas are connected through bright orange circulation elements, such as the M Factory’s former conveyor belt, which is now an orange staircase.
Other architects contributed. In the development’s north, Schmidt Hammer Lassen designed the West Bund Dome Art Centre, and the new Shanghai West Bund Theatre, while Atelier Deshaus designed commercial buildings.
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