“Urban renewal aims to organically embed designs into the daily life of urban citizens, reshape the layout of street space and motivate the infinite possibilities of site vitality.”
Background
Yunji Road is located at Xiling District, Yichang City. It is one of the most important arterial streets. In the field of complexity science, city can be regarded as a living complex system. There will always be a road in a city playing the role of nerve center of living system due to special geographic position and historical event. For Yichang, Yunji Road such a road like that.
This one hundred history of Yunji Road started from 1917. At that time, Yichang was just a port opened for 40 years. Yichang has been transferred into a modern city from riverside town. At that year, the construction of Chuanhan Railway gathered people all over China. The General Manager Office for railway construction built Association Building here. The road in the front of the house was named as Yunji Road from that time. At that time, Yunji Road was the core of traffic and the site gathering tens of millions of merchants. After the first section (from Dongshan Avenue to Yiling Avenue) and the second section (from Jiefang Road to Yanjiang Avenue) were gotten through, Yunji Road which was from Dongshan to Yangtze River became the nerve center of this important riverside city. She is the central axis of the urban area, the central axis of the politics, economics and culture of the city and the central axis of spirit for important matters in life in the mind of the old generation from Yichang.
Site Analysis
However, when we had the first site survey on Yunji Road which has such special missions, what we saw was the old-fashioned look of the road. After all, after decades of wind, frost, snow and rain, some outdoor facilities and street corners have been damaged, and the road reconstructed 17 years ago can no longer meet the current urban functional requirements; Even if one end of the road is the International Trade Mall, and the other end of the road is Riverside Park, the business of shops along the 1.5km road is poor, but the food street near other streets and the commercial center nearby are more prosperous; Outdoor public space was very lacking, as if that only the heavy traffic on this road made prosperity of this road, rather than the pedestrians; Under such circumstances, it seems that some core strength of Yunji Road was being stripped by years. This stripping was not only the wear and tear brought by time, but also the necessity of the city, a giant living body, during continuous iteration.
Fortunately, this road, experienced a hundred years, had a unique geographical location and witnessed the history of Yichang city, has been inseparable from the supporting functions of the city. During urban renewal in the new century, some things are destined not to disappear in history. We called these as place spirits. After polish of time, place spirits will be clearer, and the city memory will be brighter after a cycle of going down and up. The place spirit includes, but is not limited to, the historical changes and the cultural contexts of the site, the changes of plants, the landscape changes of the earth, the functional changes of buildings, the organizational adjustment of the urban road traffic, and the ever-changing customer group. Such a place spirit is dynamic, but also traceable and reproducible.
Design Goals
For designers, the important task for design of such a road renewal is to present these clear and bright contents reasonably and organically embed them into the daily life of urban citizens. In this process, the urban blocks where Yunji Road is located are understood as a container activated by the place spirits and having cultural self-healing power. Through the reconstruction of this container, place spirits are transferred into the daily life that citizens can perceive, Yunji Road is rejuvenated, and the core axis function of the city is finally recovered. These are our objectives.
Title Solution
01.Reconstructing the overall spatial temperament to reflect the spirituality of contemporary Yichang.
Contemporarily, Yichang closely follows the industrial footsteps of the times. The city is becoming more and more urban and modern. To be the core axis of Yichang again, Yunji Road must highlight the openness and internationalization of Yichang as a riverside port city. Therefore, for the color system of the whole road, the designer chose a more modern gray-black tone, matched with exquisite and advanced cold gray steel plates and gray-blue steel plates; locally, bright yellow steel plates were used to highlight the vitality of urban blocks, in line with the functions of surrounding blocks; in the overall design texture, a more modern space composition was selected to highlight the unique charm of CBD in the core area of the city. The creation of such a city intention makes Yunji Road look like a black-tie elite of the times from the perspective of overall personality.
02. Integrating urban life and reshaping the functions and values of streets and corners.
The return of the core axis is not only the creation of the overall spatial intention, but also the returning of the functions of urban public space. For the urban space along two sides of the road, with the continuous change of the road system, the continuous renewal of the architectural style, the continuous iteration of the surrounding business structure, the continuous replacement of users, and even the continuous growth of trees, each corner is full of unique texture, extensive stories and humanistic core. Facing such a road full of history, the designers can only adopt acupuncture-type design, i.e., specific analysis of specific issues, excavation of the cultural memory of the site, analysis of the composition of the space boundary in detail, and providing of specific space upgrading strategies for every detail of every segment.
After site surveys, meeting discussions and design integration time after time, the whole Yunji Road can be combed out with three pocket gardens, five street gardens and multiple corners and nodes. All these contents make the city life centered on Yunji Road more attractive. Such a Yunji Road is a part of daily life, and it will integrate into the life of the city residents through the urban functions.
03. Specific spatial design with place spirit and city memory as the blueprint
Roads in corners of the city have stories, but few of them are like Yunji Road, as the records of what stories happened in which year can be found through the literary history of the city and the word of mouth of the people in the city. Because of this, the design started with the functions, focused on the culture, combed the spatial structure and the context of the site, and realized the dialogue between the past and the present of the site with the help of innovative design language and modern interactive technology, so as to create an urban space connecting the historical memories of the sites, full of clear taste of Yunji Road, and extremely fashionable, open and vibrant.
Such a Yunji Road is not daily, and its unique charm is nowhere to be found in other roads. This redesign of culture has made history and memory reappear on the stage in front of people, made the road possible to become the collective memory of the city, and made the road of the diversification of redesign of culture, thus, activating the self-healing power of the city in the cultural sense.
Space Design
Three pocket gardens can be combed out along the whole Yunji Road, i.e., Salome Garden, Yuji Park and Drawer Garden. And there are five street gardens combed out, i.e., Time Gallery, Space-time Garden, Three-minute Garden, LadderGarden and Sunken Garden, and multiple corners and nodes. Each node exists independently depending on the surrounding environment, with different boundaries, contents and problems to be solved. In accordance with the three principles of design strategies, we conducted acupuncture-type design to each space.
SALOME GARDEN
Opening the space under the forest, city stand embedded with memories
The original site of the building next to Salome Garden is the old cinema of Yichang. From 1946, the cinema was called as Salome Cinema. After liberation, it was renamed as Jiefang Cinema. It used to be the collective memory of the previous generation of Yichang citizens. Up to now, the older generation of Yichang citizens can still recall their beautiful youth. Today, the original site of Jiefang Cinema has been a bar, and the only things left are ten high old camphor trees that witnessed history in front of the bar door, and the collective memories of the past have been old photos and posters sealed in the city museum.
Combining with the functions of surround urban leisure blocks, the space under the three is opened, and in the memory of Jiefang Road which spans a history of half a century, fragments of memories about Jiefang Cinema are excavated and presented in the space under the old camphor trees one by one by brand-new design means, such as ground caving and paving, cultural wall, light and shadow device, old projector and interactive movie water curtain device, etc. This space will become a compound urban open space integrating the functions of public leisure under the forest, night operation of outdoor bars, meeting and waiting, etc.
YUNJI PARK
Flowing Flexible Boundary, Strength of Venue Origin
Yunji Park is also the south entrance of Yichang Children's Park. Yichang Children's Park was founded in 1956, formerly known as Xiling Park, and renamed as Children's Park in 1986. This reconstruction of this time is its 30-60m wide image interface along Yunji Road, serving as the pocket garden interface of Yunji Road and the image interface of Taohualing Hotel entrance, excluding its core area. The original interface is the traditional iron fence used as the closed boundary of the park. The fence is the product of the green space boundary of the park in the last era and greatly blocks the relationship between people and green space. There are towering trees in the park, providing a perfect tree-lined space, but lacking high-quality leisure space under the forest. The most valuables inside the park are the towering trees with vivifying branches and leaves. These trees have experienced half a century of wind and rain, recorded the joys and sorrows of the city, and quietly stationed in a corner of the park.
The whole boundary is designed to be opened, and all the trees are kept as much as possible to provide an active and flexible boundary for the city, so that the towering trees in the corner of these parks can come to the life of the citizens with the memories in the past half a century, and support a unique green space under the forest for urban public activities. At the same time, the design re-combs the traffic organization under the forest and the relationship between the terrain height differences of the site to organically combine the city, trees, space under forest and riverside space with each other to become an active public space of urban green space. Maybe from this moment, these trees would become a new collective memory of citizens in future life.
The venue is divided into Goldenrain Tree Park, Ladder Park, Tree Gathering Site and Rest Turf. Every space is rooted in and centers on trees, and becomes an urban space with unique memory.
DRAWER GARDEN
Reshape of surface, leading to multiple possibilities for on space
Due to the continuous reconstruction of the city, the original site here has a unique spatial texture. Small bridges have built to connect with the second floor of the street-facing building. The elevation of the first floor of the buildings is below the road elevation, forming the roads into the community. With urban development for years, these small bridges still stand on the street, forming a unique small three-dimensional traffic style, providing extensive space possibilities to the sidewalk boundary. They are street drawers which are flexible for shops and citizens to use, therefore, they are called as drawer garden. In the design, 50-degree gray steel plates are used to cover the bridge railings along Yunji Road. On the one hand, row upon row of space interfaces are formed; on the other hand, the messy sight interface on the first floor of the buildings is blocked. Combining with the carefully configured perennial flower borders, unique and interesting drawer gardens are formed.
TIME GALLERY
Curbside public cultural space
As the first node at the west end of Yunji Road, it is the first gateway from Yanjiang Avenue to Yunji Road. One side of Yanjiang Avenue is Yichang Riverside Park spread along the Yangtze River. It is a popular place for daily leisure and recreation of the citizens in Yichang. Here, Time Gallery is used as the starting point, and the wall carved with characters and light and shadow corridors is used as a carrier of a long cultural scroll spread outdoors, so that citizens can read past and present lives on Yunji Road in their leisure time and walk.
CORNER SPACE
In addition to the above several large space nodes, the designer also sorted out other nodes of street corner gardens, each of which is independently dependent on the surrounding environment, such as the space-time garden, the three-minute garden, the ladder garden, and the sunken garden. All these small garden nodes form the street rest corridor with a sense of rhythm, and also enrich the walking experience of the whole Yuji Road.
POWER OF SELFHEALING
The overall renewal of Yunji Road brings new power into the core of the city. This power comes from the continuous open city corners, the open spaces under the trees, the rhythmic street rest corridors, the street space full of stories and history, and the dynamic interactive social space. These spaces turn the core axis of the city into a continuous ribbon-shaped garden full of possibilities and acceptance, so that various people in the city can find their own living places here, thus, activating the self-healing power of the power. After all, a generation will eventually grow old, and there will always be young people in the city.
Afterword
The urban renewal of Yunji Road takes place spirit and city memory as the blueprint. By combing the original urban space organization and contexts, redistributing road right and space, blanking gray space, creating park scenes, structuring smart transportation, reappearing historical memory, motivating commercial vitality and other a series of measures, the direct social benefits, such as improvement of traffic efficiency, smooth low-carbon and slow-traffic system, increase of public activity space and activation of commercial activities along the street, etc., are brought, as well as the indirect social benefits, such as increase of employment position and medium-and-long term tax revenue, etc., therefore, maximumly meeting the increasing material and cultural demands of people day by day. The original dying space is awakened, and the cultural self-healing power of the city is activities, therefore, the core axis of the city returns to the daily life of people.
