Good Stuff: Starting urban renewal with architecture
Preface – DO GOOD
Today, the fervor for urban renewal is increasing with economic development. Empowering cities through architecture and enhancing the quality of living has become the most mainstream approach to urban renewal. Outstanding buildings can greatly improve the functionality, convenience, and accessibility of a city’s region, thereby enhancing the city’s service capabilities in all aspects.
Looking at the world’s first-tier cities, they are embarking on their journey of urban renewal through architecture. Transforming old hotels into office buildings, revamping old malls, and even turning abandoned factories into trendy check-in spots through ingenious transformations. Let’s take a closer look at these buildings and understand how they contribute to the city and start the journey of urban renewal.
The High Line Park
The finishing touch to New York’s scenery
Known as the “Big Apple,” New York continually attracts global attention with its ever-changing cityscape. The High Line Park on the west side of Midtown Manhattan is the finishing touch to this bustling scenery.
Originally a disused railway freight line from the 1980s, High Line Park has reemerged with new value after retirement through transformation. Supported by the government, market, and related industries, it has undergone upgrades in horticulture, engineering, safety, maintenance, public art, and more, transforming into a floating green carpet over Manhattan. The successful upgrade of High Line Park not only protected New York’s natural ecology but also promoted commercial development in the surrounding areas, bringing ample funds for cultural and creative arts and business district development.
(Image from the internet)
Austerlitz Dock
Rebooting the “urban black hole” by the Seine
Have you ever thought that yesterday’s “urban black hole,” which people didn’t want to mention, might hold the golden key to the city’s future today?
On the banks of the Seine in Paris, the Austerlitz Dock once witnessed the glory days of the European pearl but became a forgotten abandoned site through the double-edged sword of time. In 2012, this historically rich water transport warehouse finally experienced a rebirth, maintaining its original architecture while keeping in harmony with the urban landscape. Designers pooled their ideas to turn the old warehouse into a treasure. Blending popular elements like fashion culture, street culture, and independent art with the warehouse’s historical sense, they created a new fashion center in Paris. The site combines exhibition spaces, studios, bars, dance halls, and more, transforming the former “urban black hole” into a “l(fā)ifestyle domain” by the Seine, highly sought after and admired by young people.
(Image from the internet)
Abeno Harukas
Osaka Prefecture’s representative facade
When it comes to Japan, besides being clean and orderly, there’s also land scarcity and crowded population in cities. Therefore, building transformation and urban renewal have always been important topics for the market and government. In today’s Osaka, Japan, Abeno Harukas is undoubtedly the city’s first facade and even boasts the title of the tallest building in Japan. But long before, this landmark building also wandered lost on the edge of time.
In the era when Abeno Harukas was still known as the Kintetsu Department Store, with the continuous upgrading of industrial structures and the rapid social changes, “Kintetsu-kun” urgently needed a major transformation to keep up with the direction of the times. After a series of ingenious ideas, “Kintetsu-kun” was reborn under the support of “black technology” and eco-friendly materials, becoming an epoch-making urban complex in Osaka, endowed with the vigorous name Abeno Harukas (Harukas in ancient Japanese means “to make it clear and bright”). True to its name, Abeno Harukas encompasses retail, leisure, hotels, offices, and more, driving the Abeno area to become Osaka’s new commercial core, with the building itself becoming a milestone in Japanese architectural upgrades.
(Image from the internet)
Dinghao DH3
Beijing’s rising hope
As a landmark in Zhongguancun for over a decade, Dinghao has witnessed Zhongguancun’s evolution from an electronics street to a highland of science and innovation. Now, Dinghao DH3 continues the legend, transforming from an electronics marketplace into a 5A ecological technology office building, powerfully enabling business life, returning with grandeur and renewed splendor.
Dinghao DH3, with a total construction area of about 190,000m2, integrates leading technology into architecture, bringing industrial resource support to innovative space operation models.
Dinghao east annex
Here, resident enterprises can enjoy a comprehensive transportation network, experience an environment surpassing international health standards, exclusively benefit from excellent business facilities and an all-around upgraded office experience, delight in cutting-edge display platforms built for unicorn enterprises, and cherish shared leisure spaces.
Ground-floor lobby
Here, barriers between enterprises are eliminated, with the all-scenario innovation ecosystem supporting joint enterprise success. Gaps between upstream and downstream are bridged in a superior business environment that effectively connects resources; obstacles between industries are removed in an all-scenario, intelligent international science and innovation ecological interaction platform. This empowers cross-disciplinary cooperation models. Furthermore, partitions between individuals are dissolved, with the fully upgraded building operation mode helping every resident to shine with their own value.
North Side Facade
Creating a new intelligent business ecological environment for resident enterprises through business and living scenes based on science and innovation genes. With leading operation and maintenance innovations, smart ecological design concepts, and exquisite architectural quality, Dinghao DH3, together with Zhongguancun and Beijing, ushers in an era of urban renewal, witnessing new legends in a legendary era.