SMOORE Jiangmen Industrial Park Renovation / CM Design

Text description provided by the architects. SMOORE Jiangmen Industrial Park is located in Jianghai District, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province, adjacent to Xijiang, and the Pearl River Delta Ring Expressway and Xijiang Bridge can be seen in the distance. With the L shape layout, the site covers an area of 16,429 square meters that the developer rents, which is part of the area in the factory group that connects many plants. The park consists of an administration building, two production plants, a processing plant, and a square in the middle of the park, with a total building construction area of 16300 square meters. As the development and transformation of the industrial pattern in the Greater Bay Area, Jiangmen has launched the policy of Urban Renewal to promote the transformation and upgrading of old industrial plants to attract more emerging industries into the local area.

In this project, much more modern usage spaces are placed in the administrative building. The first floor is defined as the staff canteen while different functional spaces are implemented on the second and third floors. This includes things such as the open-plan workplace, directors’ offices, meeting and training room, reception area, etc. The main entrance of the building was moved from the north side to the south side that faces the square. The original double-split stairway was dismantled and opened up into a double-height foyer, and then the front desk gives way to the front space to rebuild a lighter steel staircase with a triangular layout. The orange f-c paint is used on its surface to enhance the dynamic attributions of the space.

For solving the indoor nature lighting, the frame structure is filled with transparent window units, and all of the exterior walls enclosure components are removed except the gable wall of the building. The protrusion of the window units is presented with regular inclination and extension, also the scale is controlled more strictly to build the basic order of the facade. Even more, the protrusion makes the whole facade obtains a certain space thickness, it can be used to place furniture or potted plants. Furthermore, it offers the user a free imagination and plays good use. At the same time, the window unit continues to extend into the interior side, either as a supervisor’s office or transformed into a public leisure space, emphasizing the continuity of the interior and exterior design of the building.

Based on the usable floor area is not diminished, the overhang from the second and third floors is reserved during the scheme selection, which is on the north of the building. The translucent PC board is applied to the facade, combined with the orientation change that creates the transverse extension of the facade relationship and enriches the order of the facade, it also cut off the sight of the toilet and electric-mechanical wells from outside.

Before the renovation, the central square utilization was negative, only used for raw materials and goods stacking. This reconstruction actively reorganized the inside and outside of the site and the dynamic and static zones. The open space in the middle is bounded by the pedestrian path in front of the entrance hall, and a badminton court and a basketball court are arranged on both sides. The planting pool and leisure benches are combined to provide outdoor activity places for employees.

The east of the site is close to the main entrance of the park, with a green parking space set up to meet the parking needs of internal or external visitors. The northernmost site has a more private nature and is defined as a bicycle parking area for the staff. In the scheme design, the geometric patterns on the ground are used to distinguish and guide pedestrian and vehicle flow lines, marking out different functional blocks.

The first row of the plant that faces the square needs to be equipped with large equipment storage and mechanical loading space. The corrugated aluminum plate and stretched aluminum mesh are applied to the elevations as the skin, which plays an effective protective role and also reveals the functional attribution of the building. The facade goes in a conversation with the administrative building by slant and dislocation of the block, forming an intention of box stacking. The full-height glass directly reveals the large equipment behind it, not only to reflect the relationship between solidness and void but also to produce a strong association with the attributes of the industrial park.

The other large-scale facades of the plant remain in the original window position, with steel plate and stretching mesh creating the regularity of the form. The pedestrian main entrance is made up of the gatehouse, fire control room, and mail room. The overhead roof above both plays the function of protection and also unifies the three single volumes into a whole image of the entrance. In addition, the “rough” texture of the grooved concrete slab gives an industrial tone to the park from the entrance of it. SMOORE Jiangmen Industrial Park renovation project has nothing to do with the protection or reuse of industrial heritage. It is an insignificant one of the old factories that emerged in the process of industrialization in the past.

Nowadays, with the development of urban industry and the rise of multinational enterprises, the reconstruction of urban space is urgently required. We respond to this rapidly changing trend with the explicit expression of the semantics of industrial buildings so that the park can permanently coexist with the surrounding industrial city style which is waiting for the renovation order.