DAtrans Architecture Office

The Moganshan Road area is located in the peninsula that is close to Shanghai Central Station and surrounded by Suzhou Creek. The urban contrast could be discovered obviously between the traditional residential blocks of Lilong and the modern high-rising compounds to be built rapidly.

The national textile factory which has the brilliance history more than 70 years, located in Moganshan Road 50, is one of the so little survivals during the modern urbanism's crisis. After the entering of avant-courier artists and culture institutions since 2000, the factory is becoming an important and influenced artist's enclave in the urban landscape. And following its renaming M50 has been growing as one of the leading creative parks since 2005 in China and Asia.

After the winning of the competition we have continually involved in the master plan as well as several interior projects within the warehouses and the urban study on the surrounding area. Under the general guideline decided by the client, renters and the public we define the futural M50 as the multi functional cultural community, the equal and self organising network, the public urban space and the attractive unique landmark.

The three frames on the development of our project are the diagrammatic, the urban and the architectural. The diagrammatic frame takes as a point of departure the actual events once affecting the site of the industrial warehouses that partly generate the oppositional and programmatic aspects of M50. The urban and the architectural frames provide the stage for the diagrammatic. Both the urban and architectural frames are approached as a delayering of the contexts that constitute the buildings. At the architectural level we focus on the two issues: the relationship between preservation and development in the process of modernization, and the question of nostalgia as one of the forms through which the relationship between the past and the present arbitrates presence in the physical, social and cultural context of M50.

Since 2005 the key projects we've finished are the entrance, center square and warehouse by riverside. And we also rebuild the current elevation, visual system and landscape to form an integrated environment.