In recent years, China’s urban development practice has started shifting its focus from city expansion towards inner-city renewal. City governments and planners are rediscovering the potential of historic city quarters as incubators for new urban life and highly valuable differentiators for city branding and marketing.
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Micro-transformation
The urban renewal of Yongqing Fang, a quarter in the old town of Guangzhou, has set a new benchmark as a showcase example for a different
approach towards inner-city rejuvenation. Leaving behind the explored avenues of top-down streamlined restoration of traditional quarters into solely leisure- and commerce-centered historic districts, frozen in time and devoid of everyday life, the new model instead opts for micro-transformation. It aims to combine tradition with modernity.
At the start of the renovation, Yonqing Fang was in a rather hazardous state. Most of the dwellings had been abandoned. Only 43 buildings were still intact, 30 seriously damaged and some had already collapsed. Furthermore, the prospect of urban regeneration was met with great skepticism and apprehension by the remaining residents. Hence VANKE Real Estate Development, in collaboration with local stakeholders, initiated the strategy of micro-transformation.
Rebuilding and new construction
In a first step, all remaining buildings were thoroughly surveyed regarding structural soundness, recent condition and historic value. An overall inventory was established and intensively discussed with all stakeholders involved, leading to a final classification of all buildings into five different renovation categories applied on site: restoration, façade redesign, structural reinforcement, partial rebuilding and new construction. This classification provided the base for a micro-renovation approach: a catalog of case-by-case measures, carefully executed in collaboration with local restoration specialists and construction teams. Instead of uniform measures, an organic approach towards -re-newal was taken, which from the start accepted the coexistence of a wide array of different building types and styles next to each other and combined restoration with the injection of a new urban program.
Modernity and identity
As a last layer, the public realm was renovated. Lab D&H led the landscape design effort. Here too the focus was placed on a modernity anchored in the respect of the identity of place. Different from the architectural renovation that was enriched by and profited from the variety in styles, the renovation of the public realm faced the challenge to provide aesthetic unity to the site and at the same time create a suitable and comfortable background for all users and activities.
Read more in Topos 100 – Time
In the name of urban renewal, Anaheim tore out most of its historic downtown decades ago. Where Orange, a neighboring town, restored its historic town center and parlayed it into a magnet for restaurants, shops, entertainment, and the local creative class, Anaheim replaced its historic center with a bland mix of modern office towers.
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But now the town has a much-needed focal point, Farmers Park, landscape architect Ken Smith’s latest work in the area. Smith is also designer of the still-developing Orange County Great Park in Irvine.
The Anaheim Packing District is a three-parcel site with two significant historic buildings, part of the Colony Historic District in Anaheim, the oldest city in Orange County, California. The Packing House, built in 1911 is the last remaining packing house in the city and was originally home to the Sunkist Company. Built at the edge of downtown Anaheim and alongside the Southern Pacific rail line, the Packing House is listed on the National Historic Register.
The 1925 mission revival Packard Building is considered a locally significant historic structure originally designed as a car showroom. Both the Packard Building and the Packing House are reminders of Southern California’s agricultural and transportation heritage as well as prime examples of the mission revival architectural style that were popular in Southern California at the time.
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The empty lot between the two buildings was redeveloped along with the two historic structures to create a unified three-block park, retail, restaurant and market oriented district that is part of the City of Anaheim’s master plan for revitalizing the downtown area of the city. Ken Smith Landscape Architect collaborated with a multi-disciplinary design team, retail developers and city officials to create an urban district that preserves the historic structures while making adaptive reuse improvements and creating a landscape-oriented setting linking together indoor and outdoor use areas. The team worked closely with historic preservation consultants and SHPO (State Historic Preservation Office) officials to sensitively integrate new uses into the historic area.
The design and material vocabulary of new improvements emphasizes durable historic materials such as wood, steel and concrete. A historic rail spur was recreated and two flat bed cars were installed in a historically correct location to be used as outdoor dining terraces for the building’s restaurants.
Shade structures were incorporated into the design to provide comfort as part of the sustainability program for the project. Porous joint paving for storm water infiltration and dark sky lighting were other components of the sustainability features.
Photo: Ken Smith Landscape Architect
